


Forget-Me-Not

by Lomonaaeren



Series: From Litha to Lammas 2020 [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ancient Runes, Angst, Blood Magic, Drama, Harry Potter is Not the Boy-Who-Lived, Horcruxes, Humor, M/M, Muggleborn Registration Commission, Owls, Present Tense, Ravenclaw Harry Potter, Romance, Socially Awkward Harry Potter, Unusual Magic, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:22:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 50,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24931486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: Harry isn’t the Boy-Who-Lived, but his parents still died, and Albus Dumbledore, concerned that Death Eaters might seek the boy’s death, cast a powerful charm on him to make wizards ignore him before Harry was left with the Dursleys. Except, with the Elder Wand in play, the charm was far too powerful, and made others essentially forget Harry existed when not directly interacting with him. Sorted into Ravenclaw at Hogwarts, Harry lives a contented life with no one either loving or hating him…until the charm breaks on his seventeenth birthday, and he’s suddenly plunged directly into the middle of a living world at war.
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s), Neville Longbottom & Harry Potter, Theodore Nott/Harry Potter
Series: From Litha to Lammas 2020 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1795561
Comments: 446
Kudos: 4336
Collections: 5 Star HP Works, Coda, Serial (Time) Killers





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is obviously a major AU, as you can see from the summary, and also one of my “From Litha to Lammas” fics being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August. This will have seven parts, to be posted over the next seven days.

“Are you sure you have to leave him with these awful people, Albus?”

Albus Dumbledore sighs as he shifts the infant in his arms. Little Harry has slept since he Apparated away from the ruins of the cottage where James, Lily, and Sirius all died. Of course, Albus can’t take credit for that, given the strong charm he cast on him the moment he got a chance. “These are Lily’s only living relatives, Minerva.”

“But you could find someone else who could—”

“There is no one else,” Albus snaps, and then closes his eyes. They’re all stressed, all overwhelmed. Minerva doesn’t deserve the brunt of his temper. “I’ve looked for them,” he says. “James was an only child, and so was his father. His mother’s family, what was left of it, departed Britain during Grindelwald’s war, and I haven’t been able to find them. This isn’t the best way, but it’s the only one that will work.”

Minerva sighs and looks at the house again. “Then why do you have your wand out? Are you going to cast protection charms on him?”

“Of a sort,” Albus says softly, and kneels down to place the baby on the doorstep. “I’m going to use a charm to blur the memory of his existence in all the minds of those who know of it, except us.”

Minerva catches her breath. “Doesn’t that mean he won’t get fed or housed?”

“Not that powerful,” Albus says, smiling at her. He values her friendship because she has never once lied to cheer him up, even after a day as awful as this one. “People will still be able to see him and interact with him. They just won’t see him as _Harry Potter,_ child of two famous dead Aurors. Any Death Eaters who knew of the prophecy won’t remember that there was a second candidate other than young Neville. You know that two of Lily and James’s killers got away.”

Minerva nods. “I know.” She looks at the house. “And his relatives?”

“They shouldn’t think of him as a wizard—which, knowing Petunia, should only help.”

Albus holds the Elder Wand above the sleeping baby and closes his eyes. He can feel the power coursing through the wand, the way it always does when it bucks against his control, even now. It’s always seeking a way to make its wielder the most powerful and admired wizard in the world. If it can’t do it by pushing him into public notice, it’ll make it so that at least two people know all about his finesse and skill with this charm.

“ _Abscondo_ ,” he whispers.

Immediately, he knows something is wrong. He opens his eyes at the same moment as the Elder Wand throws itself forwards in his grip, and a net of white light envelops the Dursley home. It shines far brighter than any Concealment Charm should have to. He opens his mouth to shout—

And blinks. He’s standing in front of a Muggle house, but he doesn’t know why. Frowning, he glances around and starts when he sees Minerva. “Why are you here? Were you wounded, Minerva?”

Minerva frowns and rubs behind her glasses. “No. I think I had important business here, but I don’t know what it was. How strange.”

Albus nods. All of them are tired and bitter, though. They can be forgiven some lapses. “Well, we’d better get back to Hogwarts. I know that young Remus Lupin wanted to see me about something urgent.”

Minerva nods, and they Apparate.

Albus does glance back once to see the white light settling on what looks like a Muggle house, and frowns. Well, there must be accidental magic here because of a Muggleborn child, or perhaps because a wizard or witch who was in hiding from the war celebrated so much that they stood a chance of breaking the Statute of Secrecy. It seems odd that he and Minerva were the ones called to attend to it, and that he can’t remember the incident, but powerful magic can be like that sometimes.

The Elder Wand is humming smugly in his pocket. Albus touches the stupid thing to calm it down and turns his mind to the hours ahead. Besides reassuring Remus in his grief, he has to speak with Neville Longbottom’s grandmother and make sure that she’s fully-prepared to safeguard the Boy-Who-Lived.

And any little chance that he might remember what happened fades away from his mind in wisps.

*

Harry grows up knowing that he’s different from most people, but he eventually decides that’s a good thing.

The Dursleys only focus on him when he actually makes a lot of noise or otherwise makes himself noticeable. That means that their punishments don’t work. Harry gets told to stay in the cupboard, but they forget about telling him to stay there a few minutes later, and unless they’re right there and see the cupboard door move after he lets go of it, they don’t notice that, either. Harry has figured out quickly that they notice objects he handles only when they leave his hands. They don’t notice when he moves into Dudley’s “spare” room and gets rid of the rubbish there, either.

Then he can go and eat what he wants from the kitchen. No one ever notices, not even Aunt Petunia with her suspicious little eyes, unless they just happen to walk into the kitchen in time to see a piece of food disappearing into his mouth or his pocket. The instant he touches it, it’s just—invisible.

And at school, it’s the same thing. Harry’s extremely grateful for it once he sees how Dudley is growing up, and the gang of friends he brings with him to bully other kids. They never bully Harry because they don’t see him. Harry just sits on a swing and watches them walk past.

It _is_ hard, sometimes, not to have the teachers or the other students ever care about him. Harry learned to read by himself, sitting with books for hours in corners. The teachers mark his homework, but only because Harry gives it to them and then takes it back. If he never turned it in, they would never notice.

Harry, though, already knows that that blindness doesn’t extend to official paperwork. People can still see his name written down and think or write things about him. There was an embarrassing incident when he was eight when he was missing a whole bunch of marks, and that means that it’s easier to just do the homework and let them mark it before he reclaims it.

It’s unnatural, what Harry hears the Dursleys call “freakish” more than once. But—well, he doesn’t care, really. It’s the way things are, and maybe something cursed him (if magic existed) and maybe something tried to guard him. But Harry is happy to spend time alone, to do what he wants outside of the small amount of effort he has to spend on schoolwork, to eat whenever he likes.

To walk into a shop and take sweets or clothes or other things that people forget about existing the minute they touch Harry’s hands. Harry felt bad about that the first few times he did it, and then paranoid, wondering if he would show up on cameras. But no one has ever come after him. The best Harry can reckon, since cameras still rely on someone looking at them and seeing with their eyes instead of reading them, he’s protected.

And if no one cares about him, then he doesn’t have to care about anyone. Lonely, yes, and painful when he was younger, but soothing, too. Harry just drifts through life, thinking sometimes about what he’ll be when he grows up and wondering how he’ll arrange to sit through university classes or alter his marks so that someone will let him, but most of the time just enjoying the sunshine and the solitude and the freedom.

And then one day, a letter arrives that proves other people _have_ always been thinking about him and reading about him. Somewhere.

*

Only to a limited extent, though, Harry discovers when he arrives in the wizarding world. Wizards and witches sent him a letter and a lot of concentrated asking gets them to measure him for robes, but otherwise they ignore him the same way Muggles do. Harry assumes that maybe one of his dead parents, whose names he doesn’t know, put a protective spell on him and it got out of control.

It turns out the one big exception is the wand shop. The wandmaker, Ollivander, stares at him with large, fascinated eyes, and then makes a chuckling sound while he roots through various boxes.

“What?” Harry asks, not looking the way Ollivander is looking at him, but also somewhat enjoying the novelty of it.

“You have powerful magic on you, Mr. Potter.”

Harry nods. “But I didn’t cast it.”

“I know.” Ollivander turns around with another three wand boxes in his hands and puts them down on the counter. Apparently he’s thrilled when someone is difficult to match, which Harry thinks is weird, but what does he know? “I’d wager the one who did will find out someday, and be angry about it.”

Harry pauses. He never thought to ask a witch or wizard here about the spell, because what if they took it away? But Ollivander is standing there and grinning at him oddly, and Harry doesn’t think he will. “Do you know who it was?”

“No. There are several people who would have had the power, but few would have had the motivation.”

Harry nods slowly. Now that he knows magic is real, he reckons he might be able to find out someday. “Are you going to look for the caster?”

Ollivander cackles so hard that he almost falls over. “That’s not my job!”

Harry shrugs. “I didn’t say it was,” he mutters, and then goes back to trying wands.

In the end, an ebony wand with a core of dragon heartstring seems to prefer him, and Harry learns the names of his parents for the first time from what Ollivander says about their wands. He thinks about whether he might be good at Charms or Transfiguration when he goes to Hogwarts, but mostly, he just likes the look of the blue sparks that flew out of the end of his wand.

*

It turns out that there’s a Knight Bus that he can summon by waving his wand, and even though they forget him about the minute he gets on, that’s fine. It means he can ride for free, and he listens with some amusement to the muttering of the man who tried to greet him about, “Why’d we stop there if there was no one?”

Harry leans back in one of the squashy armchairs that for some reason fills the Knight Bus, and lets his hand rest on his wand and the bag of Galleons in his pocket. It took some time to get the goblins to pay attention to him, and then they were massively annoyed that he didn’t have his key and didn’t know anything about his vault. And they watched him suspiciously the entire time, as if they assumed he would use the magic cast on him to steal from them.

Which, Harry has to admit, is a smart thing to assume. But he won’t steal from the goblins. They treated him exactly the way they treat other wizards, it seems, from the suspicious glares he saw aimed at everyone. And it might be dangerous.

Harry just wants to live and be ignored. Danger, he can do without.

*

The Sorting Hat is mildly interesting, although Harry is pretty sure that it doesn’t matter where he’s Sorted. No one is going to notice him anyway, and he won’t make that much effort with his marks. From what he can tell, the only things that really matter are the big exams, and the professors will mark those but then forget them the minute the paper—parchment—passes into his hand.

Harry had little to do but read for the month before school, since he never made himself that noticeable to the Dursleys. He read about the important things.

The Hat chuckles on his head when he puts it on, seeming to relish in the confusion that passes over people’s face when the stern witch with glasses reads Harry’s name. “ _You think that you’re going to get ignored_?”

Harry shrugs. “Do you see any way to make them notice me?” he mutters under his breath.

“ _Some people would struggle against this curse. See it as a curse._ ”

“I think I might if I wasn’t so used to living with it,” Harry says after a second of thought. He’s wise enough to know most people would hate this. But for Harry, it’s just the way he’s always lived. And after hearing some of the things that people in Diagon Alley were saying, and reading about the war and how these people expect poor Neville Longbottom to save them, he thinks he might be happiest if they go on ignoring him.

“ _What do you desire most_?”

Harry thinks it’s an odd question, but he answers anyway. “To be left alone.”

“ _And besides that_?”

“To have the knowledge to protect myself, I suppose.”

“RAVENCLAW!”

*

Harry was a little doubtful at first about the Hat placing him in Ravenclaw, but it turns out to be an excellent choice. Harry is around a bunch of people who are least a little like him, and even when a professor reads his name in class and frowns at him and everyone turns to stare, they never stare for long. Everyone is so preoccupied with books and marks and research and gaining as much knowledge as they can to impress their parents or their professors or their Housemates or their rivals that Harry thinks they might ignore him without the curse.

He’s glad that he doesn’t have to find out, though. The Potions professor gives him a truly fearsome scowl for the first five minutes of every class until he forgets about Harry’s presence again, and never marks his essays fairly. Just the thought of what the full force of his dislike might be like bearing down on him makes Harry shudder.

But Hogwarts has a brilliant library, and Harry wanders around it and reads everything he likes. Even venturing into the Restricted Section is fine. The protective spells still shriek, but when Madam Pince or occasionally Filch comes running to investigate, their eyes always slide over him.

Harry reads about magical history, and goblin rebellions, and the best defensive wards for different buildings, and the founding of Hogwarts, and how to concentrate hard enough to get rid of just about any hex, and how to find secret doors, and the really complicated potions that Snape is always threatening them they’ll never get to brew. The world is open to him, and he turns out to be a lot more interested in what’s between the covers of books than he’s always thought. He even uses school owls to send for Muggle history books, since the magical history part is so interesting.

Flying is fun, but Harry only astonishes people for a few minutes or so until they go back to ignoring him, and he has no desire to join the Quidditch team. By now, the thought of standing out makes him flinch. He swims through Hogwarts like a fish and puts in a burst of studying for his exams in the kitchens—which was the first secret door he found—when exams come around. It’s enough for him.

And during the summer, he reckons that he doesn’t really have to go back to the Dursleys’, either. It’s not like they’ll remember him enough to miss him. He takes over a room at the Leaky Cauldron and casts the advanced locking spells that he spent far more time on than making a feather float. Tom and various other people try to force the door numerous times, but end up telling people that a poltergeist took it over. They never notice the water Harry takes for his showers and the food he removes from the breakfast trays outside other rooms in the mornings. Harry’s careful to only steal one scone or egg or piece of toast per tray.

There is one part of spending the summer in Diagon Alley that is less than brilliant, though. Harry runs into Ollivander in Flourish and Blotts. Harry is quietly amassing books he intends to just leave the Galleons for—stealing from magical people feels worse than doing it from Muggles—and starts at the sight of the wandmaker. For some reason, it never occurred to him that Ollivander would leave his own shop.

Well, even spiders have to leave their burrows to hunt, Harry supposes. He gives Ollivander a nod that’s as neutral as he can manage, and eases past him to reach the section on Dark creatures.

“Is your wand serving your well, Mr. Potter?”

Yes, Ollivander can still creepily see him. Harry sighs and turns around. Ollivander is watching him with gleaming eyes that really make Harry wish he hadn’t thought of the spider comparison. He nods. “Yes, sir.”

“And no progress in getting rid of the curse on yourself?”

Harry raises his eyebrows a little. “I never intended to.” He nods to Ollivander again and firmly picks up a book on boggarts, hoping that his back will make the wandmaker go away.

Ollivander only skirts the edge of the shelf in front of him and stares at Harry again. “Why not? You could become a great wizard if you did.”

“I don’t want to be a great wizard, sir,” Harry says. “I just want to be an ordinary one. And live through the next few years,” he adds, because the troll at school in October and the whispers everyone makes about You-Know-Who possibly coming back mean that he’s a little worried about that.

Ollivander pauses. “But your wand belongs to a great wizard.”

“Thanks, sir.”

The man gives him a stern look that says he doesn’t appreciate Harry’s cheek. Harry is pleased that it sounds like real cheek, given that he barely has a chance to practice it on anyone. “That is not what I meant. Your wand deserves a great wielder. What happens if you cannot give it that?”

“Then I suppose it’ll abandon me?” Harry finds himself intrigued with the question. He hasn’t heard anything about that, but then, he’s only eleven years old and going into his second year, anyway. He looks around. “Are there books on that here?”

“Wandmakers keep our wandlore _quiet_ , Mr. Potter.”

“Then how can you expect people to know whether their wands are going to abandon them or not for not being great?”

Ollivander turns away in what looks like disgust. Harry shrugs at him and goes back to the book on boggarts. There’s always the chance that Dark creatures can see through his spell protection, so he has a special interest in figuring out how to fight them.

*

Second year is sort of wild, what with the messages in blood on the walls and the Petrified cat hanging up on Halloween, and then the Petrified people in the hospital wing. Harry takes to always letting someone else lead the way around corners and out of rooms. No one minds that because no one notices him anyway.

Sometimes he does get a puzzled look from one of the other Ravenclaw boys at his bed and trunk, but they always glance elsewhere and forget about him again.

But sometimes Harry doesn’t have a choice about being in the corridors by himself, such as when he’s in the library reading an interesting book and it gets late and he has to get back to the Ravenclaw common room. He’s walking along briskly one night when he sees a tiny red-haired girl by herself.

Harry pauses. It’s one thing for _him_ to be by himself, but he recognizes the girl as a Gryffindor, and they’ve been moving around in packs ever since that Muggleborn firstie got frozen. What’s she doing?

Going to the bathroom, apparently. Harry would stop following her out of sheer embarrassment, but before she gets there, she takes a little black book out of a robe pocket and sets it against the wall so she can write in it. Harry blinks. She’s taking notes _here_? Why? On what?

That makes him curious enough to make him stick his head through the bathroom door, with a silent promise to himself to retreat the second he sees her go towards a loo. But she goes towards the sinks instead. Harry watches as she leans towards a sink and whispers something, and the sink _twists aside and leaves a black hole._

The girl jumps into the hole without a glance over her shoulder, which is probably a good thing. Harry thinks the way his jaw is opening might manage to break through his protective spell.

And she doesn’t come back up, even though he watches for five minutes. And when Harry takes a step back from the bathroom door, he finds he recognizes the place. The wall right outside is where the first message was written and Mrs. Norris got Petrified.

There is _definitely_ something suspicious going on.

*

Harry thinks for a while about what to do, but in the end, he decides that he’s going to send an owl to Professor Dumbledore. He’s the one in charge of the school, after all. And people can read Harry’s words perfectly well when he writes them down and they leave his hands, even if most of his professors still give their desks puzzled looks when one marked essay seems to dissolve into thin air.

It’s not that much of a struggle getting a bird to pay attention to him when he goes to the Owlery, since animals are less affected by the spell anyway, but most of them just want to sleep since it’s daytime. Harry finally manages to get one’s cooperation when he puts his hand right on the foot of a snowy owl. She ruffles her feathers up and glares at him in a way that makes Harry smile.

“Sorry,” he says, and holds out the letter that summarizes what he saw with the red-haired girl and the bathroom. “Can you take this to Professor Dumbledore, please?”

The owl gives a low hoot, looking pleased that he has work for her, and snatches the letter as she reels out the window. Harry looks after her for a second. He suddenly remembers where he saw her before. She’s the Boy-Who-Lived’s owl, he thinks. Neville Longbottom.

He gnaws his lip for a second, wondering if he’ll get in trouble for touching a celebrity’s bird, then snorts at himself. He doubts that the owl is going to go around telling on him, and who would know otherwise?

*

Two days after Harry sends his owl off, Professor Dumbledore stands up at breakfast with a grave look in his eyes. People fall silent one by one around the Great Hall, all staring at him.

Harry watches Professor Dumbledore in interest. Is that what a powerful wizard can do? A great one? Calm a room full of people down just by looking around and not saying anything?

Harry shudders. If Ollivander wants him to be that kind of wizard, then Harry is glad he doesn’t have a chance of it.

“I must warn you that a Dark artifact was present at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry,” Professor Dumbledore begins. “It has been responsible for corrupting a student and causing them to write the messages about the Heir of Slytherin on the wall and—Petrify their fellow students. We have confiscated this Dark artifact, and the student will receive help. I ask that you do not speculate,” he adds, raising his voice a little as people start to babble. “If you have suspicions, please bring them to your professors. If you think you might have had contact with this artifact, please do the same. Once again, do _not_ gossip. Do _not_ spread rumors. The student affected by this deserves your support, nor your criticism.”

 _Too late,_ Harry thinks, as Lisa Turpin and Su Li start gossiping furiously next to him. He hopes that the identity of the red-haired girl remains undiscovered, for her sake, but he doubts any reprimand can stop the rumors.

“So, was it you, Longbottom?” a loud voice asks. “Get caught at last, did you?”

Harry shakes his head as he watches Malfoy swagger up to confront Longbottom. There are plenty of Slytherins he doesn’t mind at all, or at least they don’t seem like smug arseholes when they’re answering questions in class or studying in the library. But Malfoy is just…petty.

“Neville was never the Heir of Slytherin, you git!”

Harry sighs and scoops up his scone and a dab of marmalade for it, then leaves the Great Hall. When Weasley and Malfoy start going at it, it’s bound to get noisy.

*

It takes a bit of effort to get Professor Flitwick to concentrate on Harry enough to let him pick his extra courses for third year, so in the end Harry writes a note about wanting to be in Ancient Runes and Arithmancy and leaves it on Professor Flitwick’s desk. That does the trick, or at least it does if the note he gets via school owl in return is any indication. Harry smiles and starts making a list of books he wants to take with him from the Hogwarts library for the summer.

He thought about Care of Magical Creatures, which sounds interesting, but he listened to some older Ravenclaws talking about it, and apparently it’s just—loud. Harry is finding more and more that he doesn’t like loud. He likes quiet.

Runes and maths sound pretty quiet.

*

“Do you think he really broke out to come after me?”

Harry looks up. Granger, Weasley, and Longbottom are at the table next to him. It’s an unusual sight. Granger is the only one who spends all that much time in the library.

“Who else would he be after, mate?” Weasley is leaning forwards with an earnest expression, focused on Longbottom. “I mean, he was muttering about you being at Hogwarts, and you know that he was involved in the—the deaths of your parents.” Weasley pauses for a second and squeezes Longbottom’s shoulder in support.

Harry watches a little wistfully. There are times he thinks it might be nice to have friends, like right now. No one is ever going to comfort him that way about the deaths of his parents.

Come to think of it, Harry doesn’t know any details about how his parents died. He frowns thoughtfully. He ought to look that up. He writes down a little note on the parchment next to him, and goes back to his Charms essay.

“But it just seems like he isn’t doing much about hurting _me_.” Longbottom’s voice rises. Harry wonders if this is about him not being able to visit Hogsmeade, something even the Ravenclaws were gossiping about. “I mean, he hasn’t come to the school at all. The Aurors last saw him trying to get to Albania.”

“Trust me, Neville, Lestrange wants to hurt you.” Weasley’s face is grim. “Which means we should ask Professor Dumbledore to train you in even more advanced spells.”

 _Professor Dumbledore is training Longbottom in advanced spells?_ Harry perks up. _It ought to be easy enough to sneak up into the office, or wherever else they’re practicing, and watch those._

Harry doesn’t think that he’ll have to defend himself against powerful enemies like the ones Longbottom has any time soon, but he’s getting a bit bored with the course texts and the books that he can find in the Hogwarts library. Maybe this will teach him something new.

*

Unexpectedly, the lessons that Harry sneaks into with Longbottom, which are held in the Defense classroom with Professor Lupin, give Harry some insight into his own past.

Professor Lupin admits to Longbottom that he was a close friend of James and Lily Potter, and that he left Britain for years when he learned of their deaths. And Longbottom is the one who asks the question, his voice shaky. “C-can you tell me more about how they died, sir? I know they were f-fighting against You-Know-Who, but that’s all I really know. I don’t even know who killed them.”

Harry puts down his Potions book, which he reads when Professor Lupin is giving Longbottom lectures meant to strengthen his self-confidence, and leans forwards. This is something he wants to know about.

For a second, Professor Lupin stutters as if he didn’t expect the question, but then he straightens his spine and answers. “Of course, Neville. But if you could sit down while I tell you about it—I’m afraid I’ll have to sit myself…”

Longbottom takes the chair that he usually sits in while having hot chocolate after practicing the Patronus Charm. His boggart is a Dementor—unsurprising, since Harry heard that they cornered him on the train.

Harry’s attention, though, is on the professor who’s pacing slowly back and forth in front of Longbottom instead of seating himself the way he said he would have to.

“There was a charm protecting them,” Professor Lupin murmurs. “The Fidelius Charm. You know it?”

“Yes, sir,” Longbottom says at once, while Harry makes a note to look it up. “My p-parents considered going under it, but they didn’t think that it was a good idea to tr-trust just one person that way. They trusted the w-wards instead.” He looks down, biting his lip. “Maybe if they hadn’t, they would still be here. That’s wh-what my Gran says.”

Professor Lupin leans forwards to pat Longbottom’s shoulder. “Well, my friends unfortunately didn’t get much better results out of trusting the Fidelius.” He swallows and looks for a second as though he wishes he’d never started this conversation. But luckily for Harry’s patience, he bulls ahead after a second. “I had three friends when I was in Hogwarts: James Potter, Sirius Black, and Peter Pettigrew. We were all in Gryffindor, and we spent a lot of time together, playing pranks mostly. After James started dating Lily, I had another friend.”

“It sounds like you had a lot,” Longbottom whispers, sounding envious.

Harry wants to snort, then decides he might as well. It’s not like they’ll notice him anyway. Honestly, Longbottom has two close friends of his own. Granger and Weasley are intensely loyal to him, and supposedly even helped him fight Voldemort during their first year. Harry thinks of how much he would give for _two_ friends like that, if—

Well. Things are the way they are. And the curse has given him too much for Harry to ever really wish for it to be gone.

Lupin gives Longbottom a sad smile. “I felt blessed, truly. But during the war, my friends started suspecting that I was a traitor to them.”

“Why?”

Lupin sighs. “It was a hard time to trust anyone. I had a few missions I couldn’t discuss due to security reasons, and that contributed to their suspicion.” But from the way he looks off to the side, Harry doesn’t think that’s the whole reason. Longbottom, of course, is too stupid to pursue that, and just nods. “So James and Lily went into hiding under the Fidelius with baby Harry, and Sirius joined them. They made Peter the Secret-Keeper.”

“What happened?” Longbottom breathes, sounding caught up in the story. Harry has to admit that he’d like to hear the rest himself.

“It turned out Peter was a traitor.” Lupin’s voice is deep and full of hatred. “And a Death Eater. He pretended that he wanted to visit in order to pass on some vital information, but he led a contingent of Death Eaters to attack them instead. James and Sirius died fighting them. Lily managed to put Harry in a hidden room and used her own death to seal it with a sacrifice ward that killed Bellatrix Lestrange. They knew perfectly well where he was, but the only person who would have been able to get at Harry was someone who didn’t intend him harm. Rabastan Lestrange was there, too, but he gave up in disgust by his own admission when he saw they couldn’t reach Harry and left to—go with You-Know-Who to attack your parents.”

Harry closes his eyes. The words are burning, seared in his brain, maybe because he knows a little about sacrifice wards just from his extensive reading. His mother couldn’t have done that without loving him more than her own life.

_Damn._

He almost wishes he hadn’t heard this. He doesn’t want to carry around the kind of burdens that Longbottom does.

He stands up and slips out of the classroom.

*

It turns out that Longbottom’s confrontation with Lestrange never happens, because Harry finds him first.

Harry has been wandering the school with more restlessness than ever since he heard the story from Lupin about how his parents died. He keeps wrestling with the knowledge, turning it around, trying to decide what to do about it. What _is_ he supposed to do with it? Someone loved him, and died for him, and—

And it shouldn’t make that much difference to his day-to-day life.

But it feels like it does.

Harry wonders if someone will love him in the future like his mother did in the past. If he owes his parents’ killers some vengeance. Then again, other than Pettigrew and Lestrange, he doesn’t know who any of them were. Maybe they’re all dead or in prison already. He’ll have to look at old editions of the _Daily Prophet,_ if he can, and see.

He rounds a corner that is the last one before the main staircase to Ravenclaw Tower, and freezes as he sees a man in long dark robes crouched in front of him. For a second, he thinks it’s a Dementor, but he knows what their freezing cold feels like thanks to the ones on the train, and it’s not here.

The man is glancing over his shoulder every few seconds as his hands work feverishly on something in front of him. It appears to be a jeweled golden box, and Harry shivers. It’s small, and it doesn’t _look_ harmful, but he doesn’t like to think of the kind of chaos that Lestrange might be able to unleash even with something that looks innocent.

Lestrange chuckles, and then steps back and admires the box. “For your return, my lord,” he whispers.

If that thing can resurrect Voldemort, Harry _definitely_ doesn’t think he ought to leave it lying around. He draws his wand and casts one of the hexes that Professor Lupin taught them to burst open an obstacle they think a Dark creature might be hiding behind.

Maybe it wouldn’t work most of the time, but the box is small and delicate. It bursts into shining pieces, and Lestrange darts back with a shriek, his eyes wild. He draws his wand, but of course, he has no idea of the right direction to point it in.

“Come _out_ , enemy of pure blood,” he hissed, and actually stomps a foot, as if he assumes that will produce some results.

Harry shakes his head and retreats a little way down the corridor. He doesn’t know how Lestrange got in, but on the other hand, it doesn’t have to be just his problem. He starts a Caterwauling Charm that he learned about from one of Lupin’s lectures to Longbottom, and a sharp wail starts in the middle of the corridor.

That brings the fast footsteps of Professor Snape, who must have been patrolling nearby (sometimes Harry thinks that the professor knows _someone_ is sneaking around and breaking the curfew, even though he can’t actually catch Harry because of his magical protection). Snape halts the minute he sees Lestrange, and shows crooked yellow teeth as he sneers. “ _Lestrange_.”

“Severus! Help me, you traitor! You ought to know that I have the power to bring back our Lord if you just help me—”

 _That’s interesting,_ Harry thinks, and wants to linger so he can find out what this is about (Snape was a Death Eater? He was sympathetic to Voldemort but never got arrested for it?), but Snape draws his wand and flings a _serious_ curse at Lestrange, one that turns the rocks behind him to sand, so Harry reckons he ought to get going.

*

In the end, to Harry’s annoyance, Lestrange somehow managed to escape. Apparently they captured him, or that’s what people are saying, but then someone close to him, or a secret sympathizer among the Ministry’s people, freed him. Harry doesn’t understand how or why.

If the little box didn’t have the chance to resurrect Voldemort and make Harry’s life a whole lot more miserable, too, maybe he would just have gone on his way and let Lestrange do whatever he was going to do with it.

The last week of school after exams is marked by something unusual other than Lestrange’s escape: Professor Lupin seeks out Harry to talk to him. He holds him after class, in fact, and he’s squinting hard at him and sniffing every few seconds. Harry supposes that the squinting is to help him focus on Harry, looking past the protective spell, but he doesn’t understand what the sniffing has to do with it. He _did_ bathe this morning.

“I—I was a friend of your parents, Harry.” Lupin’s voice is strained, and he clenches his fists at his sides. “I suppose you must be wondering why I never sought you out to talk to you.”

“Not really,” Harry says, balancing his satchel on his shoulder and wishing the spell was working better. He _hates_ people looking at him that way. He doesn’t do anything interesting, and anyway, it was creepy when Ollivander did it and it’s creepy now. “I thought you must be pretty busy.”

Lupin’s lip ticks for a second, and then he takes a deep breath and says, “I want you to know that I did want to take you in, but—I travel a lot, and I’m often ill, and various people thought you would be better off with your aunt and uncle.” He takes another deep breath, almost huffing in a way that reminds Harry of Longbottom around Potions fumes, and then blurts out, “Are you all right with them?”

“It’s all right,” Harry says, because that’s true, especially now that he hasn’t seen the Dursleys in years. “They’re not great, but they’re not terrible.”

“Oh, that’s good.” Lupin droops a bit. “After some of the things that Lily said about her sister hating magic…”

Harry blinks. That seems strange to him. Then again, the protection spell really must have blunted Aunt Petunia’s attitude. He wonders, for the first time, if the protection spell is connected to the sacrifice ward that his mother put on him. But then, how did someone take him out of the corner where he was and get him to the Dursleys’ house, if no one really did notice him then?

In the end, Harry is only a little curious about where his protective magic came from. The important thing is that it’s here, and it doesn’t hurt him, and it means he can drift through life and take food and even books when he needs them—although he does try to pay for them, especially now that he knows how many Galleons are in his vault—and no one really expects anything from him.

It’s freedom.

He looks back at Lupin, and realizes the man is blinking around the classroom with a puzzled air. He mutters something that sounds like Harry’s name, then shakes his head and goes back to sorting parchments.

Harry leaves with his own shake of his head. If Lupin is sick all the time and travels a lot—and apparently has already announced that he won’t be teaching Defense next year, which must mean that he’ll be leaving Britain again—then he wouldn’t be a good guardian for Harry anyway. To Harry, it sounds like he wanted to make excuses and just not be blamed if Harry found out somehow that he was a friend of Harry’s parents.

The protection spell, whoever actually cast it for him, is a much better bargain.


	2. Chapter 2

During fourth year, Arithmancy gets a lot harder, and Harry starts spending more time in the library. That’s when he first notices that there are some interesting students in Slytherin House in his year.

Most of the time, Harry doesn’t pay attention to the Slytherins. They can’t bully him the way they do some of the Ravenclaws because they can’t focus on him, and he doesn’t attend Quidditch games, where he would have become familiar with some of them. He doesn’t have that many classes with them, either. He knows names and that’s about it.

Honestly, the only one he pays attention to on a regular basis is Malfoy, and that’s because Malfoy is always antagonizing Longbottom, and everyone is always glancing in Longbottom’s direction anyway.

But this time, Harry notices Theodore Nott because he always has the books Harry needs on Arithmancy already on his table when Harry goes looking for them. It doesn’t bother Harry that much. He can pick up a book from the edge of the table, look through it to get the information he needs, and put it back, and the minute the book is in his hands, Nott forgets about it until it returns again.

But it’s not just Arithmancy Nott is researching, or even Runes, although they share that class, too. Harry picks up a book that has a rune on the cover at one point and discovers that the whole book is about runes and _brands_ placed on someone’s skin that channel magic through them. Fascinated, Harry takes the book back to his own table and reads for half an hour before Nott starts to make grumbling noises under his breath. It seems that book was important to him after all—important enough that he overcame the protection spell’s ability to make him forget. Harry doesn’t want to be caught, so he sneaks the book back under another one and makes Nott think he just didn’t see it at first.

But in the meantime, Harry is thinking. What could be so important about that topic? Nott is so quiet most of the time in class that Harry’s barely given him a thought except to approve of him when other people are shouting out the answers or taunting each other. But to be interested in brand runes…

Does he want to carve runes on his skin? For what? Nott has never seemed that invested in anything except making good marks and staying out of the conflicts that Malfoy causes on a regular basis. Last year, Harry did notice that Nott seemed to walk in company with the Slytherin prefects on a regular basis, even though he should have been old enough to know his way around the school.

Was he afraid of Lestrange? Did he not want to get caught by him?

Harry starts his own private research project, when he can spare his attention from Arithmancy and Ancient Runes and all the other things he has to do, and that’s how he discovers a picture of the Dark Mark and the information that Voldemort branded his followers that way. Oh, Harry peripherally knew something about that before. He remembers hearing that someone raised the Dark Mark at the Quidditch World Cup this summer, which of course he did not attend. But he never understood what the Mark really _was_ until he read an old newspaper article talking about how all the tried and arrested Death Eaters had the Mark, and speculating that the thing lets Voldemort communicate with and _punish_ his followers.

Which, of course, leads to Harry wondering why Nott would worry about it, until he connects it to Nott’s fear of Lestrange, and finds another newspaper article that names Terynon Nott as a suspected Death Eater. Apparently he got away with claiming to be under the Imperius Curse, which Mad-Eye Moody talks about on a regular basis in their Defense classes.

So is Nott afraid of being branded a Death Eater because his father was one? And being hurt by escaped Death Eaters because his father managed not to go Azkaban?

Thoughtfully, Harry tucks away that knowledge in the back of his mind, and continues his private research.

*

“The Goblet of Fire has chosen Neville Longbottom.”

Harry steps into the Great Hall long hours after Dumbledore has made that announcement and all the good little students are supposed to be in their good little beds, and eyes the Goblet of Fire in curiosity. It’s sitting, dark and cold now, of course, on a little podium in the front of the hall. Harry walks towards it, skirting the edge of the Hufflepuff table. He wants a chance to study such a renowned and rune-covered artifact up close.

He bends down near the Goblet and examines the base of it, and then finds, to his annoyance, that the faint light of the moon and stars coming from the Great Hall’s ceiling isn’t sufficient for him to see the runes. He casts _Lumos_ and keeps his wand in his hand. No one else will really notice it if they come in, but they would if he laid the wand aside.

And he does need the light to work his way slowly around the Goblet, studying every rune. It’s really fascinating. The runes for fire are interwoven with the ones for containment of fire in a way that Professor Babbling told them couldn’t be done. Harry wonders if he can bring up the fact that it _could_ be done in an essay without getting marked down for it.

Probably not, unfortunately. She’d want to know how he knew that, and Harry can’t admit this kind of thing, even though he does it all the time.

He works his way to the back of the Goblet, and studies the bowl of the cup. This is the side that no students saw from the other direction, and Harry isn’t that surprised when he discovers new runes here. He _is_ a little surprised that there’s a single huge rune here, one that he doesn’t know, instead of the maze of them that there is around the foot.

Harry tries and tries to make sense of the rune, but there’s really nothing like it in any of his books. It resembles a jagged mountain range in silhouette more than anything else, with a small diamond shape scratched in the hollow middle, and then lines sticking out from the edges of the silhouette that connect to eight crown-like shapes.

In the end, Harry draws as exact a copy of the rune as he can on a piece of parchment, and leaves the Great Hall with a new research quest. He suspects this rune has something to do with the Goblet’s ability to choose a “worthy Champion,” but knowing that and knowing how the rune works are different things. And he wants to know exactly how it works.

Taking Professor Babbling’s class really was the best choice he ever made.

*

“What is that?”

Harry starts and glances over his shoulder. No one should have been able to sneak up behind him and study the rune that he’s drawn, huge, on the parchment in front of him, because no one should know he’s there in the first place, or see the parchment or the books he’s using as long as he touches them.

But Theodore Nott is standing there, his eyes fastened on the rune.

Harry lays a hand back on the parchment, which ought to make it disappear from Nott’s awareness, but he only shakes his head and blinks a little, and then goes on staring. Harry swallows. He _hates_ that he’s apparently discovered a flaw in his protection spell, but he answers. He can figure it out later.

“It’s a drawing I saw in Knockturn Alley this summer. I’m trying to figure out what it means.”

“A drawing? Not a rune.”

“Maybe a rune?” Harry hedges, and shrugs. “I don’t really know.”

Nott sighs, and then blinks and squints the way Lupin did after he tried to talk to Harry at the end of last year. He shuffles away towards the shelves in the next instant, muttering something about “weird daydream.”

Harry relaxes. He supposes there’s not a new flaw in the protection spell. It can be overcome if someone is interested enough in him or something he’s doing. Lupin was interested enough—at least, for a while—to seek out Harry and try to talk to him, and Nott is searching desperately for some way to get out of taking the Dark Mark. It makes sense that this unusual rune, whatever it is, would have caught his attention.

Harry goes peacefully back to his research.

*

Harry walks thoughtfully through the corridors towards the Defense classroom. It’s the Christmas hols, less than a month after he watched Longbottom fight a dragon and miraculously win with a Summoning Charm that dropped a huge blanket over the dragon’s eyes as a blindfold, and Harry is going to use the Floo that the mad professor has established for some reason.

It occurred to Harry a few days ago that he’d never seen his parents’ graves, and that’s _wrong,_ somehow.

It took him a little while to research where they were probably likely to be, but the newspaper articles about the attack on his parents mentioned Godric’s Hollow, so Harry is at least going to Floo to the Ministry and then take the Knight Bus to Godric’s Hollow. It shouldn’t be that difficult, and if he’s wrong, then he has another week when he can make some investigations and probably find them.

He pauses when he hears someone moving around the Defense classroom. Harry frowns and leans back against the wall. He deliberately waited until the afternoon when Professor Moody said that he would be in his quarters all day, marking. He growled that in response to Professor Sprout asking him what he was doing with his holidays, and it didn’t occur to Harry until now that he might have been lying, Or joking.

When he peers through the door, he sees Moody standing there with his wand clutched in his hand. He’s looking back and forth between a few mirrors that Harry remembers being set up for the last class before the holidays. Foe-Glasses.

“Who are you?” Moody growls. “I can see you in the glass! Where are you?” He makes a slashing motion with his wand.

Harry frowns. Shit. He didn’t think of that. Of course, even if he showed up in a Foe-Glass before this, it would have just been as one of many people walking down a corridor or coming into the classroom, so there would have been no reason for Moody to single him out.

Then something else makes him tilt his head. Why would he show up as an _enemy_ in the Foe-Glasses that Moody has up? Harry’s not been an enemy of any of his Defense professors, even if he thought Lupin was creepy and Lockhart ridiculous.

Harry draws his own wand, still craning his head a little so that he can see. Moody’s magical eye is rotating back and forth wildly, but Harry knows from experience that it can’t pierce his protection spell. Harry was the only student never subjected to the Imperius Curse, and Moody isn’t any more aware of him at meals or when handing essays in than the other professors are.

“Come out, traitor!” Moody gestures sharply with his wand, and Harry feels a slight tug at his robes, but whatever curse it was slides past him without any more trace than that. “I know you’re there, Snape!”

Harry falls back a step. Yes, something is wrong here, maybe even more wrong than him never having seen his parents’ graves. The only person who would be calling Snape a traitor is someone like Lestrange—

A Death Eater.

Harry is showing up in the Foe-Glasses, but all they really show is a blurry black impression of him, which is probably why Moody thinks it’s Snape. That still gives Harry an advantage. He bends down and begins sketching three of the runes he learned this last term on the floor in front of him. Runes aren’t usually used in battle unless they can be prepared ahead of time. Battles move too quickly. But Harry is going to use every advantage he can.

He’s just finished the last of the runes when Moody comes stumping into the corridor. “I’m going to hunt you down, Snape,” he huffs. “Traitor to the cause of Hogwarts that you are!”

Harry hesitates. Maybe Moody isn’t a Death Eater. Maybe he just thinks of Snape as someone who should be in Azkaban because _he_ used to be one.

But then Moody casts a wild curse that tears above Harry’s head and explodes a stone in the wall to his left, and Harry decides that it doesn’t matter. Moody is acting mad just like his nickname now, and he really has to be stopped.

Harry erases most of the last rune with a twist of his wand. It’s one of the fire containment runes that he saw on the base of the Goblet. That means the fire rune right behind it is now free is work.

Flames spring up in front of Harry, held back from Harry by the last bit of the containment rune that Harry left from touching him, and roar towards Moody. Moody springs back with a clatter, and loses his balance, the wooden leg not able to find purchase. He goes down, but he’s casting as he goes, and the flames hover over him, held back by a bubble of what seems to be conjured air.

That’s fine with Harry. He taps the last rune with his wand, a dormant _uruz_ that always stays that way until activated by someone, and leaps back out of the way.

Moody has just started to rise to his feet, or his foot and pegleg, batting back the flames, when giant horns lift out of the corridor floor on either side of him. They snap shut on either side of him, shimmering so wildly that it’s hard to tell if they’re actually the horns of an aurochs or flowing streams of water. The only important part is that they’re good at creating a prison.

Moody casts a spell that breaks one of the horns, and Harry turns and runs away. He has to give up on his idea of using the Defense classroom Floo to visit his parents’ grave, it seems. This is too much danger.

But he still has to do something. And that means sending another owl to Professor Dumbledore, the way he did when he saw the red-haired girl jumping down the tunnel in the bathroom. It isn’t perfect, but Harry can still tell what he saw and hope that something happens as a result.

*

Nothing happens as a result.

Harry watches and waits, after the owl he sent to Professor Dumbledore saying that he showed up in Professor Moody’s Foe-Glass as an enemy and he doesn’t understand why when he’s a student. But Moody keeps teaching Defense classes, and sitting at the high table, and growling jokes or lies at the other teachers, and subjecting the students to Unforgivable Curses.

There’s also a rumor that Harry overhears because the Weasley twins were talking about it, a rumor that the man gave Longbottom gillyweed to let him succeed in the Second Task. Frankly, Harry can’t square that with the bloke seeing students as enemies. But he shrugs it off and turns away in the end. He’s safe, and that’s the only thing that he can say.

Besides, he has more fascinating things to work on, like the great rune inscribed on the back of the Goblet.

Harry’s finally started locating books that talk about runes that are like it, even if, annoyingly, he often has to take them from Theodore Nott’s table. Nott seems to be on the track of runes that judge a worthy individual, too, although he probably didn’t think of looking at the back of the Goblet before the judges took it away.

Sometimes Harry looks at Nott’s pale, tense, sweating face, and wonders about sharing the secret with him. But he honestly has no answers yet, and no guarantee that Nott would find it faster than Harry would. Harry’s impression of Nott is that he does well in the Ancient Runes class, but not spectacularly, not like Granger.

So Harry keeps working on his own, and on the night before the Third Task, he finally turns the page of an obscure book on King Arthur and sees the rune inscribed on the page before him.

Or half of it. A silhouette like half the mountain range, with the eight tendrils reaching out of it, but missing the crowns on their ends and the diamond in the middle of this one.

Harry sits bolt upright, staring. Then he frantically grabs for the parchment with the original rune drawn on it.

It’s the same as half of this one, yes. Harry doesn’t understand where the other shapes would have come in, but it’s similar. Heart pounding with joy, he reads what the book has to say about it.

_This rune, whose name has been lost to time, is a symbol constantly carved on wands and staffs found in wizarding graves from King Arthur’s time. There is disagreement as to whether it is a rune at all, or a sign meant to invoke forgotten powers for protection. But that it works seems undeniable. The protection of the staffs and wands keeps the graves inviolate, punishing robbers, and also aids and protects the rare wizard or witch who manages to win the allegiance of one of the wands or staffs._

Harry sits back, a little baffled. Protection? That isn’t what he thought the book would say. Why would the Goblet need protection? It was open for anyone to throw their name in, which was why they needed that Age Line in the first place.

Unless…

What if it keeps an unworthy person from being chosen? The Goblet from paying attention to someone who shouldn’t have their name in there at all?

It didn’t keep poor Longbottom from being chosen. But the protection part still makes sense.

So…

Harry’s gaze goes to the diamond shape, the second half of the mountain range, the crowns at the end of the tendrils.

So this other half must be what actually makes the Goblet capable of sensing and choosing a worthy person.

But how? Harry _will_ find out.

*

People are discussing the fact in soft, hushed voices the next night that Longbottom and Diggory and the other two Champions went into the maze, and Longbottom came back with the Tri-Wizard Cup clutched in his hand and Diggory’s body in his arms, screaming about Voldemort being back. They’re deciding whether to believe Longbottom.

Harry doesn’t have to decide that. He believes Longbottom, of course he does. No one could look like _that_ unless they’d seen something horrific. And he doesn’t think Longbottom has the imagination to make something like that up.

No, Harry is thinking about the fact that Professor Moody came up to drag Longbottom away, instead of escorting him to the infirmary or even the Aurors, and Harry followed because he still doesn’t really trust Moody, and then Moody ignored the black blurry shape in his Foe-Glass and locked—he thought—the door to his office while he ranted at Longbottom and then revealed himself to be an insane Death Eater.

He didn’t kill Longbottom, who’s traumatized, because Harry Stunned him in the back, and then left the room and let Dumbledore and McGonagall and Snape come in and take credit for it. Or question Longbottom, or whatever they did after that. Harry went back to Ravenclaw Tower.

He’s mostly exasperated. Why does _he_ have to be the one to keep doing things like this? He’s not a professor, not an adult, not even the Boy-Who-Lived! Someone else should be bloody well handling them!

But after a while, when he’s lying in his bed in Ravenclaw Tower and thinking about how much the future is going to suck, Harry decides something. He knows he’s safe because he’s protected by his spell. That’s not something most other people can know. Those people have to sneak around under Invisibility Cloaks, or Disillusionment Charms, or something else that’s a lot less perfect than Harry’s spell.

So, because he _can_ do those kinds of things, Harry sort of _has_ to do them. It’s not a perfect compromise, but it’s close.

And this way, at least it means that Longbottom survived, and Lestrange didn’t resurrect Voldemort last year. So that’s something.

*

Harry spends the summer before his fifth year in Diagon Alley, the same way he has all the other summers. Ollivander is the only person in the alley who reacts to him, giving him disappointed looks now and then and shaking his head. Harry ignores him. It only proves that Ollivander doesn’t really sense anything about the wands he sells after he sells them, or he would have known that Harry stopped two Death Eaters already.

Harry can be a great person if he wants. It’s just that right now he would much rather figure out this rune.

It takes him until the middle of July, nearly his own fifteenth birthday, before he manages. Then he sits back and stares and wants to curse himself. It’s so _simple._ Of course he was looking in the wrong direction.

The “rune” is a combination of the rune-drawing that he found in the one book about King Arthur’s time, and other symbols. Harry only discovered the truth when he started looking at books that weren’t about Ancient Runes, which is probably why poor Nott hasn’t made any progress.

The mountain range is reduplicated, to provide extra protection. That can happen even with ordinary runes sometimes, although Professor Babbling cautioned them to be careful about what they were doing with that, since it’s easy to link together runes that can’t actually be duplicated and blow up the whole matrix in your face.

The diamond is taken from another symbol, this one from the Founders’ time, found engraved on the tombs of Rowena Ravenclaw and Helga Hufflepuff. It means worthiness, integrity, character.

The crowns are a symbol of royal power—or great power. Harry learned that from one of his History books, of all places. Wizards used to have “Lords and Ladies” who weren’t nobility, but were powerful _magically_ , and they were the ones who earned titles like the one “Lord” Voldemort has taken up for himself. They received crowns in communications to represent not royalty, but the weight that rested on their heads.

Harry sits back with a long sigh of exultation the first time he figures it out. He glances through the window of the Leaky Cauldron room he’s in, and for once ignores the shuttered shop windows he can see and the scorch marks on a wall where a more violent duel than usual took place a few nights ago.

He has to figure out how the rune _works_ , first, but at least he knows what it means. To find the answer to a research question is always so satisfying.

_Maybe the Hat had more than one reason for placing me in Ravenclaw after all._

*

It’s almost the end of August before Harry figures out what the rune does, and then he wants to smack himself on the head. He had the knowledge of what the Goblet of Fire did as a clue, how did it take him this long?

But now he knows.

The rune judges people, and keeps them safe if they’re worthy. The duplicated mountain range doubles the protection, which in the Goblet’s case must mean that people won’t be selected for the Tournament if they’re really unable to compete. The diamond shape in the center focuses the rune on detecting the integrity in the first place. The tendrils are an aspect of the rune that Harry actually didn’t figure out right at first; the shapes on the Arthurian-age wands and staffs had tendrils shorter than this one.

This rune positions the crowns at the ends of those tendrils further away from the diamond shape in the center, meaning that the rune actually does _two_ things. First, it protects the person who’s worthy. Second, it extends that protection _outwards,_ which is probably why the Headmasters and Headmistress of their various schools were so sure none of the Champions would die in the Tasks. It keeps people safer in the future, and the longer tendrils, if Harry understands the Arithmantic equations he basically worked to test the rune by plugging in various numbers until they made sense, extend the protection much further than they would manage if they were as short as in the original symbol from King Arthur’s time.

Harry remembers listening to conversations among other students about why Longbottom would have managed to grab the Tri-Wizard Cup and have it function as a Portkey the _second_ time. That’s a little mad, isn’t it? Giving your enemy the means to escape?

Personally, Harry thought Voldemort meant to send Longbottom’s body back that way and terrify the spectators. But now he wonders if the Goblet made that protection possible, or made Voldemort or whoever enchanted the Portkey overlook the matter, or convinced them it would be all right.

Harry smiles. Now he just needs to test it.

*

Now that he’s not working with stubborn equations or a rune that no one else has ever heard of, Harry is startled at how much easier it is to actually test the rune’s protection. Harry inscribes the drawing—by now, he could draw it in his sleep—on a crystal cup, and watches it sparkle at him. Then he tosses the cup out the window of his room in the Leaky Cauldron.

It startles people when it lands and bounces, sparkling, on the street. Harry leans over and grins, and manages to Summon it back before people can touch it. There’s so much magic going on in Diagon Alley that no one has ever picked up the Trace from his wand.

Then Harry erases the rune and makes another test, carefully cracking the cup in such a way that it won’t fracture completely, and really only one panel of the crystal is affected. Then he inscribes the rune on the other side.

He holds his breath, and—

 _Yes._ The crack heals before his eyes, sewing itself quietly up the way a healing spell sews someone’s skin.

_It protects against harm in the past, too._

Harry wonders for a second how the rune can judge a worthy object to protect given that the cup is, well, a cup, and not a person, but he has two theories when he really thinks about it. First, objects don’t do harm in and of themselves, so maybe the rune reads them as innocent, and worthy of being defended. Second, maybe the person who’s drawing the rune or handling the object is considered worthy.

It humbles Harry, for a second.

But not long, because then he’s scribbling furiously at another piece of parchment, recording all his notes and conclusions and experiments and equations, and the rune drawing itself, as carefully as he can.

He also has to include an explanation of what he _doesn’t_ know about this rune, because the last thing he wants is to be responsible for someone trying this and hurting themselves. But the person he’s going to send it to might be ready to take that risk.

He finishes the letter, adds an even shorter postscript of how he came to believe that the rune would help, and then sends everything to Theodore Nott, hoping that he’ll read a letter without a name on it—something Harry is certainly not going to provide.

*

The reply doesn’t come until after Harry is back at Hogwarts, and is delivered by a school owl, the same kind of anonymous system that Harry used to contact Dumbledore the two times he had things to say that he thought the man ought to hear. Nott probably just told the owl to take it to “the person who sent me this letter,” which is the kind of vague direction that amazingly often works with owls.

_Thank you. It works._

Harry beams, a sunburst of gladness in his chest. He thinks that that’s the whole of the message until he flips the parchment over and sees more words on the back.

_I don’t know why you wanted to keep your name concealed, unless you’re worried about coming to the notice of my father or the Dark Lord. But be reassured, I do not forget._

Harry smiles a little. Maybe someday he’ll send another message to Nott, if there’s ever something that the boy can help him with, and reclaim the debt.

But he doesn’t have to. It’s enough to know that someone isn’t going to be subjected to Voldemort.

*

Not that Voldemort is the only lurking evil in the school, as Harry discovers that term.

It’s fairly easy not to notice at first. Professor Umbridge is annoying, but she can’t bother Harry when she doesn’t know he exists other than the essays that he submits in class. Harry does frown when he sees the way that she’s targeting Longbottom for the crime of doing nothing more than telling the truth. Voldemort _is_ back. Harry doesn’t doubt that for a second.

But he might have just gone on thinking it was unfair if he hadn’t happened to see the bandage wrapped around Longbottom’s hand one day after Harry knew he had detention with the woman. And there’s something _off_ about the wound, too. Of course Longbottom might have just cut himself with his Potions knife or a misaimed spell; that’s certainly what Snape would think. But Harry doesn’t bother with Snape’s opinion on much.

There’s a _feeling_ around the bandage like leaking oil. That’s the only way Harry can put it. He doesn’t understand it, but he wants to. And he doesn’t like it.

Harry actually makes himself visible to Longbottom in the library where he’s gone to find books on what turns out to be Healing. That does nothing to soothe Harry’s suspicions, of course. He reaches out and takes hold of Longbottom’s wrist, turning it around so that he can see his hand.

Gryffindor or not, Longbottom jumps a meter when Harry takes his hand. But to him, Harry would have seemed to materialize from thin air. “P-Potter?” he asks after a second, staring and blinking as Harry’s protection spell interferes with his perceptions. People can always remember who Harry is after a minute if he really wants them to or he touches them. He just sort of fills a hole in their world sometimes and not other times.

Harry nods. “I wanted to ask what happened there.” This time, he nods at the bandage clumsily wrapped around Longbottom’s hand, and watches him flush and stare at the floor.

Maybe it really was an accident. But there’s still that _wrongness._

“I don’t really want to talk about it,” Longbottom whispers. “I already talked to Professor McGonagall, and she just told me to keep my head down.”

“Well, I’m not her,” Harry says, and Longbottom squints at him as if he’s trying to decide whether that’s a joke. “And this might affect me, too. Can you let me see, Longbottom? It feels as if it’s a cursed wound.” That’s the closest approximation Harry can come up with, although he doesn’t know for sure as he’s never felt a cursed wound to know it.

Maybe it’s the strangeness of who’s asking or Longbottom’s subconscious desire to share the truth with someone or even just lack of will, but Longbottom unwinds the bandage. Harry catches his breath when he sees the bloody words slashed across the back of Longbottom’s hand. _I must not tell lies._

Harry stares and then looks up at Longbottom, whose lips are trembling. “What did she make you do?” he whispers.

“Just lines.” Longbottom sounds like he’s said that a thousand times already. It doesn’t keep Harry from staring at him in disbelief. Finally, Longbottom looks down and covers up the lines with a hand, and speaks one more truth. “With a quill that uses my own blood.”

Harry steps back, struggling not to vomit. He’s heard of those, but the book he read about them in said that they were highly restricted by the Ministry, and in fact speculated that they only existed any more in the Department of Mysteries to be studied in experiments, since it had been so long since one was used.

“I’ll—thanks for telling me, Longbottom,” Harry says. He wants to say that he’ll stop it, but the last thing he wants is Longbottom being hopeful enough about his words to tell someone else, maybe someone who could find out about Harry’s existence.

Longbottom just looks vaguely around and then rewraps his hand and goes back to scanning the shelves for books on Healing.

Harry swallows down his outrage and turns to stalk away. He doesn’t know, at the moment, how he can stop Umbridge, if things even work against the blood quill she’s using, or what he can do against the might of the Ministry. But he knows that he wants to try.

It’s _wrong_.


	3. Chapter 3

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Part Three_

Harry ends up turning to runes for the answer to Umbridge, the way he did for the solution to Nott’s problem with Voldemort, although admittedly that was more prompted by the discovery of the rune on the back of the Goblet of Fire. But Harry is getting more and more fascinated with Runes since then. It does seem as though you can use them in all sorts of ways, provided that you’re not trying to do it impulsively.

And he does discover runes for healing, and runes for binding, and runes for breaking or blocking a specific magical artifact, but that’s very different from a way to get Umbridge out of power (although Harry copies down some of the healing runes and send them anonymously by owl to Longbottom, reckoning that Granger will know how to use them if he doesn’t). And if he breaks the blood quill, she might make or steal another one, for all he knows.

Finally, Harry decides that only a combination of runes will really do, and he sets about constructing his trap. He has to draw the rune circle over and over and over again, because each time he thinks he has it perfect, he notices some imperfection that means Umbridge might be able to slip out of the trap. It’s not _likely_ , but what Harry wants is a solution that can work the first time. He highly doubts he’ll get to try this more than once.

One day, he’s in the library scowling at his circle, and he realizes that one of his parchments has fallen on the floor. And then he realizes that it’s not where it should be.

He looks up and finds it in the hands of Nott, who doesn’t spend as much time in the library as he did last year, but still spends a lot.

Nott swallows loudly and looks around, then sets the parchment carefully down on Harry’s table. His voice is low as he says, “I know that you’re the same person who helped me last year.”

 _That’s a guess, not knowledge_. Harry almost says it aloud. But with Nott looking for the person who drew the rune circle, that would be enough to pierce the protection spell, so he sits still instead, and Nott continues in a quieter, more thoughtful voice.

“I meant what I said about giving you help when you needed it. And if you want to get rid of Umbridge, I’ll even do it while still acknowledging that there’s a debt. I hate her, too.” Nott slowly moves his sleeve back a little, and a scar shows on his hand.

Harry hisses under his breath. White-hot rage blows through his chest for a second. He went through all those labors last year to keep Nott safe, and _this_ happens? And how did it happen, anyway? He hasn’t heard that Nott is marching through the school proclaiming that Voldemort is back, but maybe Umbridge hands out detentions for other reasons.

Nott spins around, but his eyes still pass right over Harry, while Harry watches. Nott finally says, “Why do you hide yourself from me?”

 _Because I don’t want to be found?_ Harry rolls his eyes, secure in the knowledge that it can’t offend Nott. Honestly, some questions just have simple answers. Not everything is a plot like the Slytherins like to imagine.

“When you change your mind and come to me for help,” Nott says finally, smoothing out the drawing of the rune circle, “I’ll be here.”

And he leaves, while Harry goes back to his trap. Honestly, if he wanted help _he would ask for it._ Some people.

*

It’s no trouble for Harry to gain access to Umbridge’s office. Unlike some of the professors, she doesn’t have passwords or portraits protecting the door. Harry supposes that she would simper about wanting to welcome students or something if someone asked her.

Not that someone’s likely to ask her. They all hate her too much.

Harry walks into Umbridge’s office during a time when he knows that she has back-to-back Double Defense classes, and carefully lays out his rune circle on the floor. It involves sketching the runes with ink, mixed with his own blood and some crushed and powdered sapphires that Snape is still accusing the Weasley twins of stealing. Harry would feel sorry for the Weasley twins, except they’re so delighted to take credit for it.

He sits down in the middle of the circle when he’s ready and closes his eyes. He breathes in and out a few times, attuning himself to the magic of the circle. It hums like a background tune, but with a discordance near the end.

Harry nods and speaks the words, “ _Sanguis veritatis._ ”

There’s a long, low sound like rushing wind, and then the tune plays again, but without the discordance this time. Harry stands up and walks out of the circle easily. It’s not a trap meant for him, after all.

And then he turns near the door and waves his wand, and the circle blinks and vanishes. With his blood in it, it’s as unnoticeable to most people as he is.

Harry goes skipping and whistling down the stairs—it’s not like anyone will hear him— _highly_ anticipating breakfast the next day.

*

It causes only a minor stir when Professor Umbridge isn’t in her usual place at the professors’ table the next morning, but a _huge_ one when she marches into the Great Hall, tears in her eyes, lays her wand on the table in front of Dumbledore, and sinks down into a kneeling position, announcing, “I have something to confess.”

Everyone gapes at her. Except Harry, who’s just grinning as he eats, and Theodore Nott, who folds his arms on the table and stares at Umbridge with a stony expression. Well, mostly at Umbridge. Harry isn’t blind to the way that his eyes flit around the Great Hall for a moment, resting on person after person, as if he’s trying to figure out from someone’s expression who cursed Umbridge.

Harry snorts to himself. Like someone who managed to hide from Nott and come up with all these uses for runes would reveal themselves with an _expression._ He hopes Nott is desperate, instead of stupid. It’s sort of depressing to think that someone he’s invested so much time and trouble in helping might be stupid.

But then Umbridge begins her speech, and Harry turns back to the main attraction of the moment.

“I have used a blood quill to torture students,” Umbridge says, bowing her head, and a bray of shock runs around the room. Even most of the Gryffindors look shocked, Harry sees. He supposes that means that Longbottom didn’t tell them about being scarred by the quill. Then again, with the way they’ve reacted to the perfectly reasonable news that Voldemort is back, Harry doesn’t see why Longbottom would trust them with such sensitive information.

“I have deliberately repressed some of the practical knowledge from the Defense textbooks for this year, especially for the upper-year students, out of fears that Headmaster Dumbledore might be raising his own private army. I antagonized students in my class whom I knew believed that You-Know-Who was back so I could give them detention. I have reported to the Minister on the private affairs of professors here at Hogwarts, and I was planning to pass decrees that would make me Headmistress and High Inquisitor. I have—”

That’s when Dumbledore stands up and shrouds Umbridge in a privacy charm, presumably because he knows that her confession is coerced by magic somehow, but enough of the speech has been heard to set up a circle of chatter among the students. It remains long after the professors lead Umbridge out of the room and the Deputy Headmistress announces classes are canceled for the day.

Harry smiles, and goes to the library, waving at Nott as he passes, since he can’t see it. Nott’s eyes are still careful, and searching.

Well, as much as Harry hopes that Nott stays out of trouble after this, he isn’t inclined to reveal himself to the other boy. He has projects and purposes of his own to pursue, after all.

*

In the end, the Ministry sends a rotation of Aurors who are recovering from injuries and the like to become temporary Defense professors. It’s somewhat desultory teaching since most of them leave within a fortnight or three weeks, but worlds better than Umbridge.

And because Harry “arranged” for her to have such a public confession, the Minister can’t exactly deny what she did. In short order, Umbridge is tried and placed in Azkaban. Apparently Fudge has lost of a lot of support, especially since some of the children Umbridge tortured were pure-bloods.

Dumbledore makes the announcement about Umbridge’s conviction even before the papers announce it, although it comes out the next day. Of course, he sits in the Wizengamot, so he’d know, Harry thinks complacently as he drinks his pumpkin juice.

“And I have one more thing to announce,” Dumbledore says, his eyes sad as he studies the students who are whispering and gossiping to each other, just like normal. “While Madam Umbridge’s confession was verified by Veritaserum and the evidence of scars left on the hands of the students she tortured, _how_ that confession was gained in the first place is a matter of concern to me.”

 _Here we go._ Harry rolls his eyes and takes another drink of his pumpkin juice.

“Somehow, someone used magic to force Madam Umbridge to confess.” Dumbledore looks from face to face, and then leans back and looks along the professors’ table, even though he ought to be able to trust _them_. “While it has worked out to our advantage, and she was guilty, that is an act that is heinous, in many ways no better than the Imperius Curse, which I know every student from second year on up is familiar with.”

Harry snorts hard enough that he has to put down his goblet. Oh, _this_ is good. He knew that Dumbledore would be unhappy, but he doubted that he would go this far.

“If anyone knows anything about the circumstances leading up to Madam Umbridge’s confession,” Dumbledore continues in a soft tone, “please come and talk to me. I promise that no one will be expelled, arrested, or otherwise mistreated for what they tell me.”

He pauses as if he hopes someone will come right up then, but then nods and starts to sit back down when no one says anything. And then a hand rises at the Slytherin table.

“Yes, Mr. Nott?” Dumbledore sounds expectant.

Harry stares in Nott’s direction, for once wishing that his gaze could pierce the protection spell. _Traitor._ Not that he’ll manage to reveal Harry’s name or presence or how he evaded capture, but he could make things hard for Harry to study in the library, given that he found the two runes parchments there. And after Harry _helped_ him.

Nott lowers his hand and says, “I think, sir, that you should leave whoever did this alone. They got rid of an enemy to Hogwarts and the students who go to school here, and that’s all that really matters, doesn’t it?”

Dumbledore frowns a little. “While they did get rid of Professor Umbridge, Mr. Nott, they did so in an unethical manner.”

Nott shrugs. “With the Ministry behind her, probably no one could get rid of Umbridge in an ethical manner, Headmaster. I for one applaud whoever it was.” And he sits back, like Harry, and picks up his own glass of pumpkin juice.

Dumbledore gives an exasperated sigh, but some of the professors, even, are nodding in agreement with Nott, and he probably doesn’t want to alienate his audience. He shakes his head and sits down again.

Nott, meanwhile, has raked his eyes across the Ravenclaw table. They don’t pause at all on Harry, so Harry doesn’t think that Nott can actually see him. He probably just thinks that someone who can do the research necessary for the rune circle that trapped Umbridge and the rune that freed Nott himself has to be good at academics.

Harry admires his perceptiveness. And he hopes that he’ll stay out of future trouble. But revealing himself to Nott never crosses his mind. He has almost everything he wants, now, other than maybe an end to this exasperating war.

*

Harry considers long and seriously what kind of effort he should put in on his OWL’s.

On the one hand, if he wants to have a good career, he does need some impressive ones. Especially if he wants to do something with Ancient Runes, and wants to have people trust that he knows what he’s talking about. And Harry is a bit curious to see how he’ll do on exams he cares to put in the effort of studying for. And given that the people who mark the exams will only remember who he is until the paper leaves their possession, it’s not like it will hurt his protection spell.

On the other hand, he has to do practical demonstrations on several of the exams, which so far he has drifted happily away from doing on exams in Hogwarts. It might cause memory impressions to linger longer in some proctors’ minds. And studying will take time away from his research.

In the end, Harry decides to aim for Exceeds Expectations on the Defense, Transfiguration, and Arithmancy exams, the “hardest” ones, which will be the most impressive, and Outstanding on his Ancient Runes one. Acceptables are perfectly, well, acceptable on everything else. They don’t matter a whole lot.

Not much does. That’s part of the advantage of being invisible.

*

“That was very impressive, Mr….Potter.”

The one disadvantage of the impressive practical performances, it turns out, is that his proctors struggle to remember his name even when they’re looking right at him. But Harry just takes it for what it’s worth, and bows his head after each pause. “Thank you, sir,” or “Thank you, madam,” he says each time, waiting for them to finish making their notes, and then backs away.

As he does, he fades form their mental vision, and they shake their heads and gives a puzzled smile before calling the next student on the list. The other students always come forwards with the assurance that someone else was there, but who it was doesn’t matter. Most of them are consumed with the fact that they have to take these exams, anyway, and that’s much more important than someone else random.

Someone else they’ll remember in a minute, surely.

It occurred to Harry some time ago that he _could_ actually cheat on these exams, easily. People won’t notice a textbook he’s carrying any more than they’ll notice him, unless he lays it down and moves away from it. But Harry wants the challenge of succeeding on his own, and the practical demonstrations wouldn’t gain an advantage from a textbook, anyway.

So far, he’s quietly pleased. He’s got a high mark on the Defense practical, he’s sure, if only for the hexes and jinxes he managed to defend against—a legacy of the false Moody’s teaching—and he knows very well that his Ancient Runes circle was flawless. The Arithmancy one will be more challenging, but he’ll worry about it later. He has Transfiguration next.

When he slips out of the classroom where they’re conducting the Defense practicals, he finds Longbottom leaning against the wall outside with blood slipping through his fingers, and Granger gazing at him in great concern.

“Neville, you really _must_ tell the Headmaster,” she whispers.

“But, Hermione, he’ll just tell me to master Occlumency, and you know I can’t do that,” Longbottom says in a tone of great weariness. “Not with Snape teaching me.”

Harry lets out a surprised snort. He’s not very familiar with Occlumency, but he knows the basics from some of his extra research. And he knows it requires trust in the teacher. Dumbledore has _Snape_ teaching it to poor Longbottom? The Headmaster really is barmy.

Granger glances up with the familiar puzzled expression that says she might have heard the echo of the snort, but then goes back to trying to persuade Longbottom. “You know it’s important, Neville. You _have_ to stop those visions from—” She takes a deep breath like she’s about to cast a Patronus. “Voldemort.”

 _Longbottom gets visions?_ That’s not a rumor Harry has ever heard. He leans over and looks interestedly at Longbottom’s scar when he leaves off rubbing it and reaches out to Granger. Sure enough, there’s a thin trickle of blood running from it.

Harry has no idea what could cause that, because it’s not the sort of magic he’s ever studied, but there is a connection between Longbottom and Voldemort, and it seems that it’s one that’s much more physical and concrete than he thought. Harry resolves to look into this when he has the time.

And in the meanwhile, he knows enough Copying Charms to make a copy of a book on Occlumency from the Hogwarts library and send it to Longbottom. Maybe he’s already read it, but it can’t do him any harm to have his own copy and go over it carefully, if the poor bastard has _Snape_ teaching him.

But right now, Harry has a Transfiguration practical to run to.

*

In the end, there’s some sort of confusing rumor drifting around about Longbottom at the end of the year, that his grandmother died in the Ministry and he challenged Headmaster Dumbledore to a duel. Harry doesn’t know what is true and what isn’t. He’s lucky enough to overhear conversations sometimes, sure, but he doesn’t go around trying to spy. He sends Longbottom the book on Occlumency anyway, and hopes it helps.

Over the summer, he starts taking serious thoughts about how to make a career in Ancient Runes. The easiest way would be to either tutor people, by post, who need the extra help for OWL’s or NEWT’s, or just draw simple runic circles for those who need things like protection and can’t afford the more expensive spells. But Harry would like to do something more focused on research.

He’s wandering down Diagon Alley thinking about it when he runs into Ollivander again. Harry rolls his eyes at him. “I’m still not a great wizard,” he says, and starts to sidestep the man.

Ollivander turns and puts a hand on his shoulder, which startles Harry so much that he stops. It’s not as though a lot of people touch him on a daily basis. Ollivander leans over and peers intently into his eyes, and this time, Harry stares fearlessly back. Ollivander _could_ have reported Harry to other people, but he never did, which means Harry can at least trust him to be neutral.

“I think,” Ollivander says at last, “that you are on your way there.”

“Huh.” Harry shrugs. “Well, I don’t know if it’s a kind of greatness that would satisfy you. I still use runes more often than I use my wand to accomplish powerful magic.”

“You will have to use your runes for _this_ greatness,” Ollivander says, and walks down the center of the alley with a little strut to his step, like he’s said something incredible.

“Huh,” Harry repeats, and walks on himself. He listens for his wand buzzing or otherwise having a reaction in the holster on his arm, but nothing happens.

Maybe his wand knows the truth and is staying silent about it, or just doesn’t see the need to be as smug as Ollivandar. Harry will probably never know.

*

The middle of the summer is when Harry is walking past the Owl Emporium, minding his own business, and then a big grey owl comes hurtling out of the window and lands on his shoulder.

Harry is already turning when he sees the flash of motion, simply because motion coming towards him is _so_ rare, but he isn’t in time to stop the owl from landing. And its talons dig into his shoulder, _ouch_ , because he isn’t wearing padding or a protective spell there. And the owl bends its head down and hoots menacingly a second later.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Harry hisses at the owl, shaking his arm, but it doesn’t get off. And the owner of the Owl Emporium is stomping out the door and handing for Harry now, seeing him easily because he’s so intent on looking for the owl. “Get off me, you stupid bird!”

“If you’re intending to buy that owl, boy, it’s thirteen Galleons, including the cage.” The man folds his arms and looms over Harry. Harry frowns at him.

“I don’t want him. He flew out of the shop and attacked me. Here, you take him.” Harry holds his arm out as straight as he can with a bloody great bird on it, and the owner hesitates for a second before conjuring thick gloves on his hands and reaching out.

The owl fluffs all his feathers out, which makes him look twice as big, and turns his head all the way upside-down. When he hoots, this time it doesn’t sound as if he’s intending to play around. The owner falls back with a gasp. Harry groans in annoyance.

“You can’t ruin my day this way,” he tells the owl.

The owl turns piercing yellow eyes on him, and sits heavier, although Harry doesn’t know _how_. Harry is fairly sure that he’s bleeding under his shirt where the talons are gripping him. He relaxes his arm for a second, making the owl sag and beat its wings for balance, and then tries to launch it into the air. He’ll put a shield around his arm before it comes back down.

The owl hangs on, though, and gives a sound like a grumble of satisfaction. The shop owner goes back into the Owl Emporium, and Harry hopes that he’s gone to get the equivalent of a bear trap, but he comes back out with a huge cage and a bag of what look like live, squirming mice.

“Thirteen Galleons,” he says, sitting the things down in front of Harry and staring at him expectantly.

“What the—” Harry cuts off the swear words because they’ll make the situation worse. “I told you, _I don’t want him_!”

“Well, he’s chosen you, and I’m damn glad the old bastard has,” says the shopkeep with a shrug. “At least this way, I get rid of him and stop him attacking all the other owls in the shop.”

Harry pins his gaze on the owl. He ruffles his wing feathers and stares back, and then sinks his claws in just a little more, as if to say that Harry would have to be a fool to think of escaping him.

Harry sighs and reaches into his pouch for the Galleons. It’s not like he can’t afford it. Most of the time, he gets his food cheaply, and there’s a lot of money in his vault.

The owner bows his head the instant Harry hands him the money and turns and strides back into the shop. He might think it unnatural how fast people lose interest in Harry once he turns around, but Harry doesn’t have to worry about it. In seconds wizards and witches are walking past him and discussing their shopping with their friends or becoming absorbed in their own business again.

The owl keeps staring at him, but that makes sense, when it’s perched on his damn shoulder. Harry shakes his head. He is a lot more visible to animals, although he’s developed scent-masking spells that help him hide from Mrs. Norris well enough.

“You aren’t going away, I know that. I’m staying in the Leaky Cauldron. The second window overlooking the Alley from the back.”

The owl turns and launches himself into the air with utter silence, and flies in the direction of the Leaky Cauldron, at least confirming Harry’s opinion of his intelligence. Harry sighs and draws his wand to heal the scratches on his arm. He’ll have to look for some sort of reinforcing charms for his robes, since he doubts that the owl will be content to sit on his perch at all times.

And then he should probably look for books on owls, too. Since one’s chosen him now and all.

*

Harry names the owl Merlin. It’s less because he wants to and more because the owl rejects every other name Harry mentions, usually by flying at him to attack him. The second time he bounces from the rune shield Harry scratched on the floor, he at least doesn’t do it again, but sits on his perch and watches Harry with a calculating look.

Harry wonders if the legendary Merlin had a temper like this, too. Maybe there’s a reason that so few of the stories talk about his actual personality.

Most of the time, Harry concentrates on the new spells that he wants to learn, and the runic circles that he’s trying to integrate with spells to defend himself from this stupid war. An ordinary runic circle is all well and good, but it requires _knowing_ that you have to draw it ahead of time, and a spell like the one he used against the false Moody isn’t effective against a bunch of Death Eaters all hurling curses.

What Harry wants is to be able to draw a runic circle beforehand, as many times as he needs it, and then cast a spell that brings the circle into existence. The theoretically difficult part is exactly where the circle is before it comes into existence.

He first experiments with drawing the circle on a piece of parchment and then somehow Vanishing the parchment and bringing it back when he needs it. But ordinary Vanishing spells don’t work like that, and Harry doesn’t know enough about the theory behind _them_ to work out how to reverse them.

He reads more about magical theory that summer, sprawled on his stomach in his bed in the Leaky Cauldron, than he ever has before, the sound of Merlin’s claws scrabbling on the perch or his beak tearing mice apart a constant behind him. His OWL scores please him, especially the Outstanding in Ancient Runes, but Harry is starting to resent that he didn’t get better explanations of theory in his classes.

Where _does_ a spell linger before it’s actually cast? Harry reads a lot of books that argue it doesn’t exist anywhere, any more than words exist before they’re spoken, and instead the wand movements and incantation and intention of the caster bring the spell into existence.

Other books argue that the spell is a hidden potential in the world, waiting to be shaped into being like a sculpture being made out of a stone or a piece of wood. Harry is interested in that theory, but he doesn’t find it entirely convincing. After all, two sculptors could look at the same stone or piece of wood and see entirely different things they want to make out of it.

No, what he needs is to reduce that infinite potential down to _one_ point where the only thing that can possibly happen is that Harry will wave his wand and speak the words, or even say them silently, the way they’ll be learning in sixth-year Defense, and the runic circle will pop into existence.

After long hours of studying and mornings of waking bleary-eyed from too little sleep, Harry accepts that there’s only one way he can contain all that infinite potential. He’ll have to carry something with him that reduces it, something that can cage and call the runic circles into being.

He needs something that can’t be taken from him. That removes the option of both carrying rolls of parchment and carving something on his wand. They could be snatched from him. He could be disarmed, although Death Eaters probably wouldn’t go for that first or on purpose.

So Harry begins researching healing and numbing spells, and not long after they go back to Hogwarts with the beginning of autumn term, he’s ready to mark the circles on the one thing that can never be taken away from him.

*

Harry locks himself in the Ravenclaw sixth-year boys’ bedroom when most of them are in History of Magic, something Harry gleefully dropped after his Acceptable on the OWL. Terry and Michael and the rest of them can’t comprehend giving up a class even when it’s useless.

Then again, they have parents and people who care for them. A side-effect of Harry’s protection spell is that he doesn’t.

Harry sighs and forces his mind away from considering things like that, gaze locked on his ribs where he’s removed his shirt. Normally the mirror only shows someone down to the middle of their chest, but Harry’s lengthened it and added spells to make the material more reflective. He needs to see exactly what he’s doing.

He breathes deeply a few more times, as calmly as he can. Then he takes up the silver knife that he’s purified with fire and salt and starts to carve the runic circle into the skin over his ribs.

The theory is as simple as Harry can make it, considering that he has to draw the circles on his body. He’ll create four basic runic circles: one on his left side, one on his right, one on his back—that one’s going to be the most difficult—and one on his chest—the shallowest. The circles will all have different purposes. The one on his left side will be mostly protective against curses, the one on his right flank will pull him back to his room at the Leaky Cauldron past any spells that have been put up to prevent that, the one on his back will guard against physical objects like falling wood or stones, and the one on his chest will gather up magic from his environment and charge his spells with it.

Depending on the situation, Harry will touch the general circle for what he wants, circumscribing that infinite potential and calling a specific configuration into half-being. Then he’ll use the wand movements and incantations that he’s going to associate with certain runes. For example, _Aguamenti,_ once one of those circles has been invoked, will conjure not water but the rune _Uruz_ in its water form.

And the circle will come into being around Harry and activate, drawing power from both the general one on his skin and Harry’s intent behind the associated spell.

If he’s taken by surprise, then the circles will work together, the one on his chest picking up magic from the environment and feeding it to the appropriate circle—for example, the one on his left side if curses are in the offing. That particular protection can only work once or twice to bring spells into being from potential space without Harry’s intent to power it, but by that time, the situation shouldn’t be a surprise anymore.

It’s going to be a lot of work, Harry thinks absently as his Numbing Charm begins to wear off and he casts another one. But it’s worth it. He has to face this war alone, and although he’ll try to avoid it, he’s still going to do his best to protect himself. He likes his life, despite everything.


	4. Chapter 4

Snape is the Defense professor, which is all right. He teaches Defense with more clarity than he does Potions, which he doesn’t really bother to explain, but he still sneers and belittles and mocks people, and he says nothing about Runes or any other form of magic that could be integrated with it. Harry sometimes listens and sometimes brings a book to read through class.

Slughorn, the new Potions professor, is much better. Harry is a little concerned on the first day, when he explains about Amortentia. Love potions are a threat that Harry didn’t even think about, although from the nauseated look on Longbottom’s face, he’s dealt with them before.

Then Harry wants to shake his head and snort at his own absurdity. No one will love potion him because they can’t _see_ him. And Death Eaters are unlikely to choose love potions as a means of attack.

Harry continues on with his own private studies and his runic circles. He’s working now on ways that would let him link the four circles on his body into a fifth one that would essentially hover above his head when all four were activated. That way, he should be able to react instantly to any threat that would come up in battle.

He becomes aware, somewhere near Christmas, that there are other things going on. For example, he happens to pass Dumbledore on his way to the library one morning, and notices that the Headmaster’s right hand is blackened and looks sick and diseased. Harry blinks. He doesn’t know what kind of curse could do that, but he wants to. That way, he could defend against it.

For another, Dumbledore and Neville happen to come into the Headmaster’s office when Harry is up there browsing through Dumbledore’s private library. (Overhearing the password a time or two makes the gargoyle respond to him). And Harry hears the word “Horcrux.” After that, he visits on a more regular basis.

It seems that Voldemort has created Horcruxes, pieces of his soul that are embedded in objects. Harry finds the idea revolting. Did Voldemort even do any _research_ before he tried to pull something like that? Apparently, it was one of those Horcruxes that possessed the red-haired girl in Harry’s second year. That means that there could have been another Voldemort running around, probably committing murders and possessions, and Voldemort would have been revealed pretty soon.

Harry despises _stupid_ enemies more than he despises people who just want to commit murders. Voldemort is supposed to be the most powerful and intelligent wizard in the world, but obviously, he’s not.

Longbottom is still pasty white when Dumbledore talks about a prophecy of some kind and how Longbottom is meant to defeat Voldemort, but he’s there and he’s listening, and Harry is grateful. Grateful that Longbottom is so brave, grateful that it’s not his burden.

It _could_ have been. At one point, in response to a question from Longbottom, Dumbledore says, “Well, remember, it had to be a child born at the end of July to parents who had thrice defied him. There weren’t that many candidates. Just you and…” He trails off, his brow wrinkling. “Someone else. Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter.”

 _Ugh._ Harry shudders at the thought of people following him around and staring at him with lovesick eyes the way they do Longbottom. Fate, or Voldemort, or whatever, chose otherwise, and he’s damned grateful.

*

_I consider this debt like a noose around my neck. Will you not allow me to fulfill it?_

That wasn’t the only letter that Harry’s got from Theodore Nott in the year and a half since he sent him the protective rune that would have freed him from having to take the Dark Mark, but it’s the one that got Harry to break down and tell Nott that he would meet him near the entrance of one of the “secret” passages on the third floor.

Harry will explain, in person, that he has no intention of claiming this “debt” that Nott owes him. That hopefully ought to make him rest easier and spare Harry from any further melodramatic letters.

Nott comes striding around the corner right on time, but of course, his eyes slide right over Harry. Harry steps up to him and waves his hand. Nott still looks past him. Harry sighs and puts his hand on Nott’s arm.

Nott flinches and tries to draw his wand. Harry narrows his eyes a little. “Do that, and I’ll let go and you’ll never be able to find me again,” he warns.

It seems to take him a long moment, but Nott slowly nods. “How did you know that?”

“There’s a protective spell I have on me that keeps me safe unless I really want to be seen,” Harry says, with a shrug. He doesn’t mind revealing that to Nott. Nott is going to forget it after Harry walks away. “Anyway, I wr—”

“Who _are_ you?” Nott is staring him up and down, his eyes bright with a cross between fear and astonishment. “I—you look like you’re in my year, or fifth, but I don’t know you at all.” He peers at Harry’s Ravenclaw House tie. “And I damn well should.”

“My name’s Harry Potter.”

Nott’s eyes sharpen. “Then I damn well _should_ know who you are. You’re in my year?”

Harry nods. “Yes. Anyway, the protective magic I have on me is going to prevent you from remembering a lot of what I had to say, so I wrote down my response to your letter. I promise, I’m not going to claim a debt. I saw you researching how to protect yourself from the Dark Mark, and I thought I could help, so I did,” he adds, to Nott’s mask-like expression.

“You’re a Ravenclaw, not a Hufflepuff.”

Harry rolls his eyes. “And you’re a Slytherin, not a Death Eater. People give Houses too much credit. _Anyway._ Do you want the letter that says I have no intention of claiming the debt or not?”

Nott nods, his face revealing no hint of what he’s thinking. That’s fine with Harry, as long as Nott doesn’t try to hex him. He reaches slowly into his robe pocket, because he thinks that’s a good idea when Nott’s so jumpy, and takes out the parchment. Nott slides it into his own pocket.

“Why don’t you want to claim the debt?”

“I wrote down—”

“Tell me. I want to hear you say it.”

“You won’t remember it.”

“I don’t care.” Nott’s eyes are darting all over Harry’s face and robes and legs and eyes, as if he can burn the memory into his mind by looking at everything at once. “I still want to hear it. I want to know your reasons.”

Harry stares at him, then shrugs. “ _Fine._ I saw that you were trying to research something, and some pieces fell into place, and I realized that were you probably looking for ways to protect yourself from the Dark Mark. It fit with research I was already interested in doing, like the runes on the Goblet of Fire—”

“You _researched_ that? Why?”

“Why not? It was interesting.”

Nott appears at a loss for words, so Harry hurries on, willing to have this over with as soon as he can. While he’s visible to Nott, other people can come along and see him, too, and Harry doesn’t like that one bit. “I hate Voldemort. I think he’s stupid and _incompetent._ Oh, stop flinching, will you?” he adds impatiently, when Nott looks like he’s about to bolt down the corridor. “I might have researched protective runes like that anyway, because I don’t have a family to care for me and I don’t want to get caught up in the war.”

“How would anyone notice you, if you have protective magic like this?” Nott shifts closer and touches Harry’s forehead as if he expects to find a lightning bolt scar like Longbottom’s. Harry shivers a little. It’s so _strange_ to have someone else touch him. He can’t remember the last time someone human did.

“There’s always the chance they might. I saw a chance to help you, too.” He glances towards Ravenclaw Tower. Was it his imagination, or did he hear the slight click of claws that might mean Mrs. Norris is about? “As far as I’m concerned, this was a research project that let me help someone who was innocent _and_ let me help myself. You don’t owe me a debt. I won’t claim it. Don’t worry about it.”

Nott is silent for a long time. Harry pulls away from him, but Nott follows him, this time with his hand turned over so he’s the one clasping Harry’s fingers.

“If I _want_ to help you, would you allow me to do so?”

“How can you do that, Nott?” Harry asks as gently as he can. “I presume that you had to run from your father, and so you probably have a struggle of your own for a home and money at the moment. And after this conversation, you’ll only remember what’s written on the parchment.”

“That’s not true. I can’t imagine forgetting you.”

Nott’s face is closer to Harry than anyone else’s has ever been, his eyes wide and probably sincere, his mouth open in an expression that isn’t a smile and isn’t a plea. Harry stares at him, then sighs.

“You will, though. That’s the way my protection spell works.” He disengages his hand from Nott’s and pats his arm awkwardly. “I hope that you’ll be more at peace now and won’t feel like my giving you that rune is a noose around your neck.”

“Harry.”

He isn’t proud of it, but Harry gives Nott another startled look. He can’t remember the last time someone called him that, either. People like Lupin, when Harry willed them to see him, just used “Mr. Potter.”

This is a night of firsts, and it seems that Nott isn’t done with them yet. He steps in and _brushes his lips_ over Harry’s. Harry has no idea what he’s going to do until it’s done, and no idea why Nott did it, and no idea why the expression Nott’s mouth has taken on now is very much a satisfied smile.

“I don’t think I’ll forget,” Nott repeats softly.

Harry pulls back and withdraws his touch from Nott. It takes a second, but Nott is glancing around for him after that. Harry surges past him in the direction of Ravenclaw Tower, trying to calm his stupid fast breathing.

No one has ever done that. Not a boy, not a girl. Of course, no one has ever known that Harry was there to do it to.

And Nott probably did it was because he was emotional. From what Harry has observed, the bloke doesn’t have that many friends in Slytherin House. So someone who has “saved” him, as he sees it, and someone he’d never seen before, probably made him react weirdly.

Harry settles back into his bed with a sigh. It was a strange moment for both of them. If Nott does have any fading, half-clear memories, he must be wondering why he kissed someone.

And Harry…

Part of him has never regretted that protection spell so fiercely.

*

The Death Eaters come to Hogwarts on a clear spring night, and pull Harry out of a sound sleep that he’s only had for a few hours. He exhausted himself today trying to make all the runic circles join together into a sixth one that would protect him from potions.

But he comes flying out of sleep when he hears the shrieks, and runs down the stairs from Ravenclaw Tower with his wand in his hand. People in dark cloaks and white masks are everywhere. Harry begins Stunning them in the back as he runs. At first, he doesn’t even know where he’s running.

Then he does, and curses himself for a fool. But he _can_ do this, and probably no one else will think of it, and if someone did turn traitor—which they had to have to let the Death Eaters into Hogwarts—then they might know about this, too, and tell Voldemort’s minions.

He attended a “Horcrux lesson” with Neville in the Headmaster’s office in the last week, so he knows the password for the gargoyle. He pelts up the stairs, not waiting for them to finish turning, and bursts into the office. He can hear the fighting beneath him and around him, strange muffled echoes traveling through the stone walls.

Harry tears open the drawer that Dumbledore showed Neville, pausing for a shake of his head when he finds out that there’s no _lock_ on it, even. The diary that was possessing the red-haired Weasley girl is still there, intact. Dumbledore figured out no way to destroy it.

One of Voldemort’s Horcruxes. Harry can’t leave it here, and he has no idea if Neville will be able to come back for it.

He dumps it into his robe pocket, ignoring the tingle of sharp energy that races up his arm at contact with a Dark object. As far as he’s concerned, there’s no temptation great enough to convince him to write in the thing. Besides, the tingle stops the minute it hits his engaged runic shields, anyway.

Harry runs out of the office door, and nearly slams into a Death Eater. This one is a hulking figure with shaggy grey hair and yellowed teeth and nails, who’s laughing as he corners a man who looks like a Weasley.

Harry Stuns the werewolf in the back, too, and runs away while the ginger man is still staring. He’s halfway back to Ravenclaw Tower when someone starts yelling, “Stop Snape! Stop Snape! He killed the Headmaster!”

Harry whips around. The corridor is mostly empty, but still, it’s hard for him to see the black robes snapping as Snape runs down a staircase. There’s a flash of bright hair next to him that probably means Malfoy is accompanying him.

Harry lunges forwards. If not for the protection spell, he wouldn’t dare to follow them at all, but it’s just possible that he can catch a murderer, and then Voldemort would lose a powerful Death Eater.

And it would be some revenge for the low marks on Harry’s Potions and Defense essays, too.

He comes out onto the grounds and sees Longbottom frantically chasing Snape and Malfoy, roaring something about cowardice. Of all the insults, that’s the one that gets Snape to stop and turn around.

 _Are you sure you weren’t a Gryffindor?_ Harry thinks, shaking his head, although to be fair he doesn’t know if he’s addressing Snape or himself. This kind of casting spells on people who haven’t done anything to him personally is just irresponsible.

Then again, he already “interfered” when he found that protective rune for Nott. So he should just give up the notion that he’s going to stand back and stay neutral when Death Eaters are running around killing people.

Snape is yelling at Longbottom, interrupting whatever spell he was about to cast. Harry carefully lines up his wand so that he won’t hit the brave idiot while he aims at the murderous idiot.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work. Just as Harry’s Stunner, supercharged by the runic circle on his chest, leaves his wand, Malfoy grabs Snape’s arm and screams in his face, trying to drag him away. Harry’s spell hits him instead. Malfoy falls, his arms slack, and Snape backs away and runs for his life.

Or freedom. Or whatever.

Longbottom is staring in all directions, but after a second, the protective spell does its work, and he forgets about someone he can’t see and goes over to Bind and secure Malfoy. Harry’s happy to leave him to it. He’s on his way back to Ravenclaw Tower to contemplate his own stupidity, and what he’s going to do now.

*

As it turns out, from the conversation he eavesdrops on between Longbottom and his friends at Dumbledore’s funeral, he’s probably not going to come back to Hogwarts next year. Dumbledore thought Voldemort would take over the school as soon as he could, despite not actually coming with the Death Eaters during the attack. And Longbottom and his merry band of Gryffindors are going to search out and destroy the Horcruxes.

Dumbledore actually did find the location of a Horcrux, Longbottom tells Weasley and Granger, but when he and Longbottom went there, they only found a fake locket. Harry’s disappointed to hear that. If it had been real, he would have stolen it from Longbottom so that he could keep it away from terminally suicidal Gryffindors while he sought a way to destroy it.

Of course, he _does_ have the diary…

And there are runic theories that lend some credence to means to use it, as well.

*

Harry backs up from the diary. He had to isolate the damn thing in _two_ circles he drew in his room at the Leaky Cauldron, one so huge that it takes up most of the floor. That one is just to negate the book’s continual attempts to grab hold of his magic.

The other one is covered with depictions of stars and cost him a solid week of research into Astronomy, which he dropped after his OWL. But it’s at least the right conjunction of stars for what Harry wants to use it to do.

Track the other fucking Horcruxes down.

He rests his wand over the runic circle on his chest, and it comes to life, beaming soft green-golden light through his clothes. Harry isn’t sure why his personal magic shows up in that mixture of colors, but he’ll take it. At least the gold isn’t Gryffindor colors and the green isn’t the sickly light of the curse that probably killed his parents.

“ _Invenire,_ ” Harry breathes. He essentially created this ritual, and he could have chosen a long Latin chant, which would have spread out the burden of the magic drain over many syllables, but he chose the brutal drain and the short casting time instead. He can still remember what he sees while he’s lying on the floor.

The magic lights the outer rune circle, turning silver as it dances over the depictions of the constellations overhead right now, and then zigzags down the inner tines of the circle that surrounds the diary directly. In seconds, the book is pulsing with silver flame. It starts to turn black, and Harry grunts as he drops to his knees, the spell draining him swiftly.

The thing is fighting back. Harry didn’t think it could, he’d thought he neutralized it, but—

“ _Invenire_ ,” he barks again, and the magic listens to him and not the Horcrux’s persuasions.

In seconds, the diary sparkles and six lines radiate out from it like the spokes of a wheel. Harry is staring in horror. Voldemort made _seven_ of the damn things? _Why_?

But Harry knows the images won’t hold very long, and he begins memorizing them instead of wondering why Voldemort is such a fucking idiot.

There’s a locket like the one Longbottom must have been talking about, tucked away in a dusty cabinet. Harry squints and manages to see that there’s a family crest on some kind of cup next to the locket. That’ll have to do until he can look it up.

There’s a huge snake, rearing up to lean its head on a throne while a bony hand pets it. Voldemort’s snake? Probably.

There’s a little crown or diadem or tiara of some kind hanging off the ear of a bust, which is sitting on another cabinet. The stone walls behind that make Harry think of Hogwarts.

There’s a ring lying in a shallow dish in what seems to be the Headmaster’s office. Harry blinks. He supposes he knows now why Dumbledore’s hand was blackened.

There’s a cup high on a shelf in what seems to be a Gringotts vault.

And there’s Longbottom’s face, with its wide and staring eyes.

Harry crumples over, and passes out.

*

When he wakes, it’s to find blackened runes inscribed around the diary, with more of them turning black as he watches, and someone pounding on the locked door. Harry grimaces and rubs his face.

He’s already moving to cover the diary with the square of enchanted silk that he’s been keeping it wrapped in when the strangeness of the second thing hits him. He spins around and stares at the door of his room.

He’s stayed in his room at the Leaky Cauldron for _years_. No one can find it because Harry wills them not to, and even the story they spread at first about a poltergeist taking it over has faded from their minds. When he’s here, that’s easy enough. When he’s away, he uses runes that make it forgettable to everyone. Why have they failed now?

“I mean it, open up in there, or I’m going to summon the Aurors!”

It sounds like Tom, the barkeep. Harry limps over to the door and manages to open it with one hand that feels like it’s been flayed. The runic circles on his left side and chest, in particular, feel dead, and his stomach aches as if it’s been deprived of meals for a solid year.

It _is_ Tom, and he has his fist upraised as if to knock again. Harry manages to keep from flinching back. Then he tells himself it wouldn’t matter anyway, because it’s not as though Tom can see him—

Except that the man’s eyes focus on him, and his fury only dims a little under the confusion.

“Who the hell are _you_?”

Harry coughs and shakes his head. He really needs to rest. He needs to eat. He needs to figure out why his protective spell has failed. He does what is most instinctive under such circumstances, and wills his protective magic to rise and surround him.

It doesn’t work. Tom is still glaring, still reaching out as if he’s going to grab hold of Harry’s shoulder, and saying, “Well? I’m waiting.” Then he looks over Harry’s shoulder into the room, and his face undergoes a terrible change. “What are you doing? Is that _Dark_ magic?”

And Harry can’t even really say that it isn’t, because after all, the diary is a Dark object, and it’s corrupted most of the runes surrounding it when he turns to look. He backs away from Tom, and finds himself swishing his wand. After all, the Ministry can’t get after him for violating the Trace even if his protective magic has failed. It’s Harry’s seventeenth birthday today, and the Trace has broken.

The runes vanish from the floor. The diary’s magic halts, swirling and uncertain, with the disappearance of its cage, and Harry hastily casts another spell to wrap the enchanted silk around it and drop it into his robe pocket.

“You still haven’t told me anything.” Harry never thought Tom could sound threatening, but he does, growling deep in his chest like a bear. “What are you _playing_ at?”

Harry sighs. Something has happened, and it seems plain that the room at the Leaky Cauldron isn’t going to be a sanctuary anymore. He clings to the calm tenor of his thoughts as best as he can, to prevent the panic that thunders and leaps in the back of his head from overwhelming him. “My name’s Harry Potter. I’ve been using this room for a while, using powerful magic so that no Death Eaters can find me. Sorry, I overdid it. I obviously made people forget about the room altogether. I _did_ wonder why I wasn’t getting any meals—”

“That’s not the way it was, boy,” Tom interrupts him. “You might as well know that this door appeared from bloody _nowhere_ and startled one of my _paying_ customers so much she screamed!”

Harry stares at him in silence. “But that’s what I mean,” he says, when he realizes from the glare that he has to say _something_. “I overdid it, and made people forget the room existed.”

“There’s no magic like that,” Tom whispered. “And there’s no magic that would make me forget I had nine rooms instead of eight, and _especially_ no magic that would make me _remember forgetting_ that I have nine rooms!”

Harry’s blood chills so abruptly that he breaks out in a bout of shivering. Oh, _shit_. Oh, _shit._ This isn’t some temporary failure of his protective magic, the way he was already thinking it might be. This means that people will remember him.

People will remember that he was in rooms with them, probably. Lestrange, who was fighting with the other Death Eaters at last report, might remember that Harry was the one who stopped him from resurrecting Voldemort in the middle of Hogwarts. Lupin will remember talking with him in third year. Nott will know that it was Harry who sent him the protective rune.

_Everyone can find him._

“I want to know what you’re going to do to make good—”

Harry spins around, his wand already in motion, grabbing every single thing out of the room that he can: his books, his parchment, his trunk, his quills, his socks scattered on the floor by the bed. By the time that he’s finished turning a complete circle, the packing spells have finished and the objects are shrunken and clustered on his person.

And although Harry has grown more than he once thought would be possible given the scattered and irregular nature of the meals he got at the Dursleys, he’s still shorter than most of the boys at his age, and it’s an advantage now as he ducks under Tom’s arm and _runs._

Tom is shouting after him, and Harry half-feels bad about not going back and paying the reckoning, but he doesn’t look back. He keeps running, and feels the aching in his lungs and the bouncing of his trunk in his pockets against the runic circle on his right side.

A bloody _wasted_ runic circle, since it’s the one that would pull him back to the Leaky Cauldron, and he can’t redo it, he would have to carve the others all over again, too—

He comes to the staircase and slides down the banister, avoiding what looks like a Stunner from the back. There’s a girl he vaguely recognizes as a Hufflepuff in his year in the taproom, opening her mouth to yell. Harry ducks past her without a second glance, hating the way that his skin crawls—she can _see_ him—and performs a Disillusionment Charm on himself as he skids out the door.

It’s not a very good one. Harry’s never had to perfect it, given his protective magic. But although more than one person frowns at the shimmer of motion he must be performing, no one catches up to him, and no one is able to tell Tom, who comes panting and roaring out a second later, where he’s gone.

Harry finally fetches up in a small alcove off the mouth of Knockturn Alley. He leans against the brick and closes his eyes, breathing in deep, tearing gasps that nearly counteract the usefulness of the Disillusionment Charm.

_Fuck._

What went wrong? He knows that nothing he ever did before had an effect on the protective magic, unless he really wanted to appear to someone. And of course things he wrote always appeared once they left his possession, and animals could sense him.

(There’s going to be hell to pay with Merlin, who’s out hunting right now).

Is it something to do with the ritual he performed last night? Could he have overtaxed the magic or something? Harry grimaces at the thought of that, and feels the malevolence of the Horcrux diary radiating at him through the cloth it’s wrapped in and the fabric of his robe.

Shit, he wishes he’d never got involved in this stupid escapade. He should have just left defeating Voldemort up to Longbottom, who’s destined to do it. But not even the Headmaster ever discovered a way to destroy a Horcrux…

Harry reins himself sharply back in. This isn’t the time to let his research-brain take over and make things worse. He has to find shelter, and he has to find safety. He’s not even sure that they’ll be in the same place.

He still has plenty of money in his trust vault, but not enough to pay for lodgings for the rest of his life, probably, which was the whole reason that he made the room in the Leaky Cauldron fade from Tom’s memory in the first place. He can buy meals, but he would rather have a quiet room where he can do what he likes and cook when he wants. He sighs. And he has to figure out why the protective magic dissipated, and whether he should send the Horcrux he has and the knowledge of more to Longbottom.

He wants the protective magic _back_ , with a longing like hunger.

That he probably won’t be able to have, at least not right now. But Harry vows to himself that he’ll do some research so that he can move through the world the way he’s used to again.

Well. He has two choices, given that he can’t go back to Hogwarts and blend seamlessly into the stone—and he’s not sure that Voldemort hasn’t taken that over, by now. There’s already statements circulating that there won’t be any Muggleborns attending this year.

He can write to Longbottom, explain that he’s the person who would have been the other choice for that stupid prophecy, pile on the guilt about losing his parents to the same war that took Longbottom’s, and ask for sanctuary.

Or he can write to Nott.

Harry slumps against the alley wall as he thinks about it. Nott is going to know _everything_ , now, including that kiss in the corridor that he must regret. And he’ll know that Harry kept a bunch of knowledge from him, and who he is.

Harry sighs. The problem is, there’s no guarantee that he’ll be safe if he writes to Nott—no guarantee, even, that Nott still feels that he owes Harry a debt—but he doesn’t have any better ideas.

He looks up as Merlin lands on the wall in front of him and bends over. It doesn’t puzzle him that the owl can see through the Disillusionment Charm. From the way he bends over and fixes his devouring eyes on Harry, it’s likely that someone will just think he’s hunting mice.

“Will you take my message to Theodore Nott?” Harry asks the owl, half-thinking he’ll get a rejection. It would fit with the tenor of his morning so far.

But Merlin instead hops down to the cobblestones in front of him and hoots softly. Harry blinks. That almost sounded _approving._ Huh. Maybe Merlin wants to live in a building with a proper owlery and recognizes the name of Nott as someone who would probably have one. Harry doesn’t feel like anything can surprise him at this point.

He tears off a piece of parchment from the first scroll he can dig out and writes the simplest message he can think of. If Nott’s going to reject him, Harry doesn’t want to spend too much time on it.

_Nott, you probably woke up this morning with memories that you didn’t have when you went to sleep last night. I can explain, if you want me to. My name is Harry Potter, and I request sanctuary if you still feel that you owe me a debt._

He hands the parchment to Merlin and watches him fly away, then shakes his head and drops the Disillusionment Charm. He’s starving, and he’ll need to be visible to buy something.

 _Visible._ It still makes Harry’s skin crawl.

*

Merlin finds Harry when he’s eating the fish and chips he got from a Muggle pub in the middle of a park. At least Harry got his food before Merlin came back. He absolutely believes that ruddy owl would fly straight at him in the middle of a Muggle pub.

The parchment says only, _Come ahead,_ and gives some detailed Apparition coordinates.

Harry swallows, nods, and feeds the edge of a piece of fish to Merlin, who looks like otherwise he’s going to take Harry’s whole plate. Then he stands up and makes sure that he’s left nothing behind, that his trunk is secure in his robe pocket, that his wand is in his holster, and that he has everything else, until Merlin nips at his boot.

Now, he has to go _be visible._


	5. Chapter 5

Harry straightens up from the shaky Apparition—he attended the lessons they all did in Hogwarts during their sixth year, but he never had to _apply_ them before—and stares around the dusky field. There’s long grass in every direction, bowing beneath the dark wind, beneath the stars.

“Harry.”

Harry turns abruptly, his wand in his hand. He hates being seen. But probably less when the person watching him has a faint smile on their face and all of the smile in their eyes, the way Nott does. He has a _Lumos_ Charm on the wand in his hand, so that Harry can see his face more easily.

“Thank you for coming.” Nott cants his head in what is probably the direction of a distant house. “Will you follow me?”

Harry nods slowly and does so, aware of the way that Nott’s gaze remains on him, as if he assumes that he has to fill in all his “lost” memories right now. “I’m not going to put you in danger, am I? I suspected your father was a Death Eater.”

“I have my own house.” Nott’s voice grows clipped for a second. “He grew so angry when he couldn’t force me to take the Dark Mark last summer that it was necessary.”

“And you had a spare house lying around?”

Nott smiles when Harry glances at him, looking as if he was waiting for the glance to give the smile. “Not in the sense you mean. There was a property that my grandfather owned which he willed to my father’s firstborn child. My father’s never been able to alter the will or the terms of the bequest.”

Harry nods. He comes over the top of a hill and sees a cottage ahead of them, complete with brick walls and what looks like an ivy-entwined fence around it. He can’t make out much more than that from this distance, but he relaxes. It looks like a big enough place to make a little space of his own, which is all he really wants.

“I apologize for how small it is.”

“No, I mean, it’s fine,” Harry says, rolling his shoulders with his discomfort as once again Nott _looks_ at him. “Before this, I spent my summers in a room at the Leaky Cauldron that I made the barkeep forget about. Sharing a house with one person is going to be something of a luxury.”

Nott comes to a stop, tilting his head. “And are you going to explain to me how you managed that? I thought it was only you that people forgot about when they weren’t looking at you.”

Harry studies him. “If you’re really interested, sure, I can do that. Not that I know that much about my protective magic or why it disappeared today.”

“Today’s your seventeenth birthday, isn’t it?”

“How did you know that?” Harry is no longer surprised that people have memories him now, as depressing as it is, but his birthday isn’t common knowledge.

“My father thought it was a good idea to keep detailed records about his enemies. Or people he thought of as enemies. I stole some of them when I left to set up my own house. He wrote down details about your parents, and that you were born on July 31st, 1980.”

“All right. But I don’t see what that has to do with my protective magic disappearing.”

Nott smirks a little, as if he thinks that Harry’s incredibly dim. Harry just goes on staring at him, waiting for him to come out with it, and finally Nott does. “You’re of age. The protective magic was probably placed on you as a child to help you survive. It makes sense that it would vanish when you legally became an adult in the wizarding world.”

Harry curses softly. That makes a lot more sense than some of the answers that he tried to come up with. And of course, whoever cast that spell on him was probably planning to be there to protect him themselves, and couldn’t have anticipated how attached Harry would grow to the protective magic.

“Come on, then. There’s no sense in standing outside the house.”

Harry follows Nott into the cottage. It’s a nice enough place, he supposes. The walls are paneling instead of stone, and there are several (still) paintings of landscapes and one of a dragon in flight. The floor is stone, covered with thick rugs in shades of red and black and silver, and Nott shows him the staircase that leads up to the bedrooms.

Harry yawns. He _does_ want to sleep; Tom woke him up far too early this morning. But he also wants to tell Nott one thing that might affect whether he’s willing to house Harry.

“Can you feel what this is?” he asks, and takes the Horcrux diary out of his pocket, unwrapping the silk from it.

Nott has a polite look on his face until Harry unwraps the silk fully, and then he stumbles back as he gets up from the chair. He’s breathing hoarsely, his pupils standing out as he stares at Harry.

“What the fuck is _that_? I’ve never felt anything so Dark in my life. Except once, and then—” He cuts himself off.

Harry nods. “I know. This belongs to Voldemort.” He rolls his eyes as Nott hisses at him. “Relax, I can—” And then he curses. Right, the protective magic that made people ignore him is gone. “Are the rumors about him putting a Taboo on his name true?”

“As far as I know,” Nott grinds out. He’s still staring at Harry as if wondering what venomous kind of snake he’s invited into his home.

Harry sighs. “Fine. I’ll call him That Bastard. This belongs to That Bastard. It’s called a Horcrux. One of the seven anchors that he’s using to hold on to life,” he adds, because Nott shows no signs of recognizing the word. “From what I’ve heard by eavesdropping on Dumbledore and Longbottom, they need to destroy the Horcruxes before they can destroy That Bastard. But they didn’t figure out a way to do that before Dumbledore died. I performed a ritual that showed me where all the Horcruxes were, using this one as a beacon. At least one of them is in Dumbledore’s office, so they had two at one point, but they didn’t destroy either one.”

“How did you get this one?”

Nott’s voice is more strangled than ever now, but Harry doesn’t know if that’s down to the definition of a Horcrux, or that Harry has one, or that there are seven, or something else. “I sneaked into the Headmaster’s office to grab it when the Death Eaters came to Hogwarts. I thought that they might find it and take it. It was there because it was possessing some girl in our second year and making her Petrify the students.”

Nott puts his hand over his eyes. “And you know how to destroy them?”

“No. That was something I was hoping to research, actually. If you have access to a good library? Can you sneak books over from your father’s house?”

“I have some. And the rune means that I can go into the house and sneak more out, as long as he isn’t there. I’ll have to look.” Nott leans forwards. “But I want to hear more about this ritual that you said used this book as a beacon.”

Harry frowns. That’s the part that interested him, or made him react with exasperation? Strange. But then again, Harry supposes that he ought to spread the knowledge of what the Horcruxes are around so that someone can retrieve them if Longbottom dies in his insane quest to destroy them, which seems likely.

“All right. I surrounded the diary with a circle of runes designed to suppress its Dark magic, as otherwise it reaches out. Then I surrounded that with a second circle that used the position of the stars in the midsummer sky to imbue the runes with power, and I used spokes to channel the magic, and—”

“You can use _Astronomy_ with _Runes_?”

“Er, yes.” Harry eyes Nott. “I thought you did pretty well with Astronomy. Better than me, anyway. I had to do a solid week of research before I figured out which constellations and specific stars I should target. Why don’t you know this?”

Nott leans back and shakes his head. “Listen. You belong in Ravenclaw. I don’t know half the things you know, and I don’t even fully understand the description of the ritual. You _created_ this ritual?”

“Based on other rituals.” Harry thinks he can see where this is going, now, and he wants to head it off. “So that means—”

“It means that you’re incredible,” Nott says, and there’s what Harry didn’t want to see, the look of someone being impressed with him. People who are impressed with him might want to use him, and he no longer has the protective magic to deflect their interest. “And you’re better with Runes than anyone I’ve even _heard_ of.”

Harry does preen then, a little, because that skill is the one that he most wanted praised, and it’s not the same as when Nott was thanking him for the protection rune, something that only benefited him.

Harry abruptly sits up. Why didn’t he think of that before? It’ll involve a lot of research and probably redoing the rune circles he bears on his body, but he _can_ resurrect the protective magic! He just needs to find the runes to do it.

“What did you just think of?”

“A way to start hiding again,” Harry says. He doesn’t see any harm in telling Nott. Their debts are paid back, and as long as he can stay here and have access to books, then things ought to be all right. Now that he thinks of it, Nott is less likely to betray him than many other people, given that he’s benefited from Harry’s skill already.

Nott’s face shuts down for a second. Then he stands. “You said something about being tired?”

Harry didn’t, he just yawned, but he stands. “And you don’t mind helping me engage in research to destroy the Horcruxes?”

Nott draws his wand. “If you’ll trust me to put a ward around that thing, I might know something we could do right now.”

Harry perks up at once. The diary is malevolent enough that he hasn’t been happy carrying it around, but leaving it someplace for Death Eaters to find and take back to their master wouldn’t have worked, either. “What’s that?”

“Fiendfyre.” Nott looks him straight in the eye. “I can control it, I promise.”

“Let’s try it,” Harry says at once. He’s heard of Fiendfyre, but not even in the books in the Restricted Section included the incantation, and he wasn’t about to try casting or imitating it when he didn’t know the spell. He glances around. “Should we be doing this outside? Do you want to burn down the house and build another one?”

Nott sighs. “A containment ward based on the rune that you gave me is already around the house, which is why I had to give you the Apparition coordinates some distance away. And I know how to cast that ward on a miniature scale.” He raises his wand and twists it in several flourishes through the air. Harry watches, and can make out a familiar corkscrew shape and another one that looks like an open lotus blossom.

“Did you base that on some of the images from _The Book of Six Wizards_?”

Nott twitches, and the ward spirals away from his wand and settles around the diary like a piece of string. The book immediately begins to buck, but the magic it emits falls back every time it approaches the boundary of the containment ward. “You’re a bloody genius.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to distract you.”

“You’re just a genius, that’s all.” Nott studies him for long enough that Harry feels he has to nod to the Horcrux, but then Nott nods and turns back to the book. “ _Fiendfyre_!”

Harry’s mouth falls open as a tornado of flames blasts away from the end of Nott’s wand. That’s _it_? There’s no incantation because it’s just the _name of the spell_?

He feels cheated.

But then the fire lands on the Horcrux, and he doesn’t feel cheated at all by the scream that erupts from the diary. There’s something black in the middle of all that red and gold that’s struggling to get away and envelop the air in between them, but the Fiendfyre concentrates around the book and forces the spirit, or the shade, back into it, and then there’s a sudden explosion.

Harry flinches despite himself, but realizes in time that the containment ward will hold back the explosion from him. Nott gives him a disappointed look anyway. Apparently Harry should trust in his expertise if Nott trusts in his.

“Sorry,” Harry mutters, shrugging as he studies the last remains of the book before the ward moves in on the Fiendfyre at a gesture of Nott’s wand and squeezes it out of existence. “That was brilliant.”

Nott flushes for some reason, before he turns away abruptly and walks towards the staircase. “You’re ready to sleep, then?”

“Yes, fine,” Harry says, and follows Nott, both tired and satisfied to the bone. At least one Horcrux is gone, and in the morning, he can write Longbottom about the others and hopefully turn the quest over to him.

There’s the small fact that one of the Horcruxes seems to be Longbottom himself, but, well, that’s not really Harry’s problem. And maybe Longbottom can take a bath in Fiendfyre with a special runic circle or something, and have the flames just destroy the Horcrux in him, instead of his body.

Harry falls asleep trying to construct that kind of runic circle in his head.

*

“Is this your owl, Harry?”

Harry’s mouth falls open when he comes around the corner into the breakfast nook of the cottage, and not because Merlin found him. Harry used him to send a message to Nott once, after all.

No, it’s because Merlin is sitting on Nott’s arm and _letting Nott scratch his head._

“That’s my traitor owl,” Harry agrees, sitting down on the other side of the table and doing his best not to jump when sausage and eggs appear in front of him, joined a moment later by tea and pumpkin juice and porridge and scones and marmalade. Nott must have house-elves. Harry isn’t used to them outside Hogwarts. “He apparently likes everyone _but_ me.”

Merlin turns his head away with a genteel hoot, and lets Nott go on scratching him. Harry rolls his eyes and starts eating.

“He’s a beauty,” Nott says. “Perhaps you don’t treat him right.” He laughs as Merlin bobs his head in an exaggerated fashion, but he doesn’t get to give Merlin sausages. Instead, Merlin launches himself from Nott’s arm and flies straight at Harry, making him duck, before he lands on the table next to him and hisses. Harry feeds him some meat in resignation, and then starts putting marmalade on a scone. The greedy owl can’t resist, but then he’ll get his beak stuck shut for a while and stop bothering Harry.

“I’m glad he’s here, anyway,” Harry says, when Merlin is indeed struggling with the marmalade and Harry has had peace enough to eat some scrambled eggs. “I need to send a letter to Longbottom.”

Nott gives him a cool look, rather like Merlin when he thinks Harry’s done something stupid. “Why would you?”

“Why _wouldn’t_ I?” Harry asks, and swallows another bite. “He’s one of the Horcruxes. It’s polite to tell him before attempting to destroy them, I would reckon. And besides, I hope that he’ll take over the task of hunting them. He might know better about where they are than we do, anyway.”

“A living being _cannot_ be a Horcrux.”

“I think you would have said until yesterday that no one could create multiple Horcruxes, either.”

Nott opens his mouth, then closes it. “Good point. What were the others you saw?”

Harry outlines the Horcruxes he saw and what he could tell of their locations, including sketching the family crest on the cabinet that the locket was in. Nott has moved his chair around the table to sit next to Harry by the time the elves bring some parchment for the sketch, which Harry isn’t sure is necessary, but—

Sometimes he remembers the way Nott kissed him and gets a bit flustered. It’s better to concentrate on the sketch.

“That’s the Black family,” Nott says, sitting back with a frown. “There’s only a few of them left. Your godfather Sirius Black died with your parents. His father and his brother died before he did, and his mother a few years after. His cousin Bellatrix Lestrange is dead—”

“The same Lestrange who killed Neville’s parents and participated in killing mine?” Harry interrupts.

Nott blinks at him, then shakes his head. “That’s right. I almost forgot that Rabastan Lestrange is supposed to have escaped in our third year.”

“ _Did_ escape. He showed up at the school with some kind of plan to resurrect That Bastard. I stopped him.”

Nott blinks hard at him, then says, “Somehow you managed to leave that out of what you’ve told me of your adventures so far.”

Harry shrugs a little. It isn’t like it’s the cleverest thing he’s ever done. “But I have to admit that I don’t know what happened to him after that. He escaped, but I never heard how. Just that some sympathizer freed him.”

“How close were the Lestranges to the Dark Lord?”

“Uh, I think you would know that better than I would.”

Nott’s eyes shine in annoyance for a second, but then he nods. “Fair enough. Yes, from what my father said, they were close in the first war. But the Dark Lord never freed them from Azkaban, or maybe he didn’t have the people to do that. And Rabastan Lestrange was jealous of his older brother and sister-in-law, from what he said. He probably wouldn’t try to do it, either.”

Harry has been thinking about something else, about Longbottom’s suspicions of Malfoy dropping the diary in the red-haired girl’s cauldron. “Do you think that the Lestranges might have been close enough to That Bastard to receive a Horcrux?”

Nott catches a sharp breath. “Maybe. Bellatrix was a Black before she married. Do you think it’s the locket?”

Harry shakes his head a little. “That one is just sitting in a cabinet. The Lestranges probably don’t have anything like that left, do they? But there might be a shut-up Black house somewhere that does.”

“If that’s the case, then you have the best chance of anyone of getting to it.”

Harry narrows his eyes, not least because Nott sounds pleased about that. “What do you mean?”

“Sirius Black was your godfather. Didn’t you think he might have left you something?”

“What kind of legacy is a _Horcrux locket_?”

“Oh, come on, Harry, I doubt he knew about that. But maybe he left you the cabinet, or the house where the cabinet is. It would explain why the locket has remained undisturbed all these years, instead of seeking out someone to try and poison like that book.”

Harry pauses. “I don’t know. No one ever came and told me anything about that. I had enough trouble getting the Potter money the first time I went to Diagon Alley. It was hard to get the goblins to pay attention to me.” He wonders idly why the protective magic worked on the goblins but doesn’t seem to work on owls and cats. Maybe it just has to do with the relative level of sapience, or maybe it has something to do with how dangerous a magical creature is to him. Maybe if he had been the one in the Tournament instead of Longbottom, the dragons wouldn’t have been able to—

“Harry.”

“Sorry,” Harry apologizes. His research-flights, as he thinks of them, haven’t ever disturbed someone before, because it’s not like he talked to people on a regular basis. “Well, I suppose there is one person who would be able to tell me if Sirius Black left me anything. Remus Lupin.”

“Our third-year Defense professor? Why?” Nott blinks, which seems to be a habit with him. Maybe Harry can be good for Nott by giving him more things to be surprised about. Otherwise, he doesn’t think that anything he does is likely to come across as very good for Nott, personally.

“Because he told a story to Longbottom about how he knew my parents. It was the first time I’d heard exactly what happened that night.” Harry bites his lip pensively. “I can assume that with the protective magic fading, he probably has memories of me and will be hoping for some kind of contact with me. I mean, I hope that, too. I have no idea what he’s been doing in the past three years.”

“I’m surprised that you didn’t try to write to him, since you know letters weren’t subject to the protective magic.”

“Honestly? It never seemed all that important.”

Nott snorts a little. “And yet, it’s important to you to get involved in the defeat of the Dark Lord and the fate of the world.”

“I like studying at Hogwarts. I’d like to pass my NEWTS, which are _written_ , so that I can get any kind of career I want. And as long as That Bastard is around, half-bloods with the kind of political history my parents had aren’t going to be welcome at Hogwarts.”

“Fair enough,” Nott says after a minute. He looks stunned, but Harry doesn’t know why. Then again, many things don’t make sense about Nott, including the way he thinks that it’s all right for him to use Harry’s first name.

It’s not that that _bothers_ Harry, not really. It just strikes him as weird. They don’t truly know each other, and Nott has known for almost a year now that all personal debt was wiped out between them, so why treat Harry as a friend?

Why give him shelter in his house, as a matter of fact?

But that’s the sort of fact that Harry thinks it would be prudent not to call Nott’s attention to, right now, so he just sighs and says, “I’ll write to Lupin. Like you said, it would be a good chance that he’d know if Black left me anything.”

“ _You_ said that.”

“Right.” Harry shrugs. “Sorry, Nott. It’s not like I’m used to any regular conversation.”

Nott nods. Now he looks amused. Harry gives up on figuring him out. He’s standing to get some ink and parchment, which he saw in his guest room last night, when Nott says, “I can go back to Nott’s Nook, take some of my father’s journals, and see what he says about the Lestranges.”

“Isn’t that dangerous for you? And where’s Nott’s Nook? Your father’s house?”

“It intrigues me that you ask that question second,” Nott says, but he goes on before Harry can ask what’s so intriguing. “Yes, it’s my father’s house. But as long as I choose a time when he’s out, the rune you gave me protects me well enough that I can risk it.”

Harry nods slowly. “All right. You don’t have to get involved in this, you know. Giving me shelter is enough.”

“I could sit back and act neutral, but then I wouldn’t get what I want.”

“What you—oh. You want to go back and study at Hogwarts, too? And it might not be safe enough for you even as a pure-blood if you don’t follow That Bastard.”

“Good thinking,” Nott says, and reaches over Harry’s chair to scratch Merlin’s head one more time before he ventures upstairs. Harry shakes his head at him, especially since he felt Nott’s fingers in his hair for a second.

Harry supposes that he’s probably confusing to ordinary people since he spent so much of his life under the protective magic and has no idea how to act around others most of the time, but Nott is confusing enough to give him a run for his Galleons.

*

Lupin writes back within a day after Harry sends the letter, perhaps because Harry used one of Nott’s two barn owls instead of the irritable Merlin. His writing dashes across the parchment, with some blots here and there.

_Dear Harry,_

_Of course I remember you. I so wish that I’d been able to forge a closer connection with you during your third year. And I wish that I’d been able to stay on as Defense professor. Sadly, by that time Headmaster Dumbledore had come to believe that the curse on the position was real, and he thought it wasn’t worth the risk to try and have me stay more than one year._

_The magic you describe makes sense, at least as far as explaining why I never once thought of you during the years that you spent outside of Hogwarts and there, but I’m afraid that I don’t know who cast it. It could have been your parents or Sirius. He knew some Dark Arts spells from growing up in a family dedicated to them that he never shared with us._

_I was close friends with Sirius and your parents, both. I was so sorry to lose all of them that it wrecked my life for years. Any stories that you want to know of them, please ask me._

_As far as what Sirius left you, I’ve included a list of the vault numbers and one house address below. I held onto it for years because it seemed important, but it didn’t have your name and I’m afraid that the curse on you made me forget who it was for. I hope everything goes well with finding the artifacts that can help you survive._

_Please let me know when you want to meet._

_Sincerely,_  
 _Remus Lupin.  
_  
“Huh,” Harry mumbles once he’s finished reading the letter, sitting back and staring at the ceiling. He never imagined that Remus Lupin would be so eager to meet with him and try to forge some kind of—what, connection? That’s the only thing Harry can call it.

He’s got used to never having a family. His Muggle relatives wouldn’t have been that to him even if they could see him, and he doesn’t remember his parents or Sirius Black at all. If the protective magic was their work, they already did much more for him than they would have by leaving him multiple vaults full of money or furniture.

But this letter does make him wonder, a little wistfully, what it would have been like if the protective magic wasn’t there and other people could see him. If he’d have friends, and if he would have made a deep connection with Lupin.

Then Harry sighs. He supposes he’ll never know. And if friends are like Nott, staring at him intently while waiting for him to explain the letter, Harry’s not sure he wants more. Why do people need to act like he’s important and they’re waiting for him to _do_ things just because they can see him? He didn’t matter for years, surely he can not matter again.

Once the quest for the Horcruxes is resolved, anyway. And that means that he should finish it up soon—the parts he can do—so that he can go back to researching things to replace his protective magic.

“There’s a list of vault numbers and a house that my godfather left for me,” Harry says. “The house is probably the best bet, because there didn’t seem to be darkness beyond the cabinet in the vision. What do you think about visiting this place?”

Nott nods at once. “We can go tomorrow morning.”

Harry blinks, because he didn’t mean for Nott to go with him. He was just asking the bloke’s advice. But then he shrugs. “All right. I’ll work up a few runic circles to take with us that should make us less noticeable.”

“Aren’t you going to ask about what I found in my father’s journals?”

“I didn’t know you went already. I mean, I was in the library,” Harry feels the need to add as he watches Nott roll his eyes. “It was distracting.”

“Yes, I know,” Nott says, on the heels of a sigh. “You _were_ Sorted correctly.” Luckily, he goes on before Harry can figure out if that’s meant to be an insult. Dealing with people is confusing. He’ll be glad when he doesn’t have to do it anymore. “I managed to get confirmation that my father was at some sort of Death Eater gathering yesterday evening, and I went to find the journals.”

“What did they say?” Harry demands, leaning forwards.

Nott pauses and stares at him. Harry doesn’t roll his eyes, because he’s not as rude as Nott, but it’s close. What is his addiction to dramatic pauses?

Oddly, when Nott goes on he’s a little flushed and has to clear his throat in a way that doesn’t signal dramatic pause. Harry is about to ask what’s wrong, but then decides that he doesn’t care that much. “I found that my father was grumbling about Bellatrix Lestrange being entrusted with ‘something special’ the year before we were born. Based on the vision you saw, that’s probably that cup that looks like it’s in a Gringotts vault. Bellatrix Lestrange’s, I assume, or the vault of whoever inherited from her.”

Harry nods. “Then I’ll pass that information on to Longbottom.”

“Thank Merlin,” Nott says unexpectedly, and Harry frowns at him. Nott waves a hand. “I thought you might insist on going after it personally the way we’ll be going to the Black house.”

Harry snorts. “We have the ability to get into the Black house, and take the locket out if we need to. I know a little about handling Horcruxes because of the diary. If you think I’m going to break into Gringotts and take something from a vault there, you’re mental.”

“The way you explain the difference makes it sound clear. And I suppose that you never were considered for Sorting into Gryffindor.”

Harry smiles. “No.”

*  
Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place, turns out to be a dingey townhouse in the middle of a row of dingey townhouses. Harry frowns. “From what you’ve said about the Black family being a nest of blood purists, I’m amazed they were willing to live here.”

“Perhaps they weren’t always as bad as they later became. Or they came up with ways to make the house secure enough for them.”

Harry glances sharply at Nott. He’s darting his eyes around everywhere, and his hand rests on his wand. Harry wonders if he can sense the Horcrux from this far away, although all Harry feels is a slight tingle of magic that he thinks relates to decaying defensive wards. “What’s wrong, Nott?”

“There’s so many _Muggles._ ”

Harry blinks. “Sorry?” He didn’t even think about that aspect of Nott coming with him, but then, until they got here, he thought the house was on the outskirts of London or Diagon Alley.

“How can you stand being around them so much?”

Harry shrugs. “I grew up with them during my childhood, when I just knew that something was different about me, but not what. Come on, we can go into the house and get out of their sight anyway.” He walks towards the house, with Nott coming after him like a shadow.

No key came with Lupin’s letter, but Harry doesn’t think he needs it, not after some of the things Nott said about snotty ancient pure-bloods. He reaches out and puts his hand on the door. There’s a sharp hiss, and a snake illusion rears from the doorknob.

But Harry knows it’s just an illusion, as the runic circle on his chest ignites and draws magic into him, charging the spell he casts before he can cast it. It hisses like a snake and looks like one, but doesn’t _smell_ like one. When he casts the _Finite,_ the snake vanishes with a puff of smoke.

“You’re not a Parselmouth, are you?” Nott asks.

“That’s Longbottom, not me,” Harry says absently as he presses his magic through his hand into the door. There’s wood, and there’s a sense of waiting, listening, _watching_ magic. Harry speaks to that. “My name is Harry Potter. Sirius Black made me his heir. His brother is dead. His parents are dead. His cousins are in Azkaban or disowned or not here. I am come to claim the house.”

The magic sways back and forth for a second. Harry waits. Nott said that magic as ancient as the kind that probably wraps the Black properties always wants to survive. It’ll take him in place of someone better.

And that’s all Harry wants. He supposes a house of his own might be nice, but this one is probably in decay as bad as the wards on the inside. They’re here mostly to retrieve the Horcrux, and then he never has to come back again if he doesn’t want to.

The magic he can sense hisses almost like the snake illusion, but with an overwhelming sense of _You’ll do, I suppose,_ and then settles heavily on him like a cloak. Harry catches his breath, and the door clicks open.

They step into an entryway that stinks so badly of mold that Harry grimaces. He can hear Nott casting some Air-Freshening Spells behind him, and he joins in, until they can at least breathe. He glances around. No cabinet like the one that held the Horcrux in his vision from the diary immediately greets him. “Well, it’s not right here. Upstairs or downstairs?”

Before Nott can answer, there’s an almighty shriek, and the curtains that were hanging off to the side and which Harry hadn’t paid any attention to jerk open. There’s a portrait of a woman there, an unpleasant one with heavy black hair and grey eyes. Harry vaguely remembers reading something that said the people of the Black family tend to look like that. She begins to scream words then. “DEFILERS OF MY ANCESTORS’ HOUSE! TRAITORS! FILTH! MY FOREFATHERS—”

Harry has already gathered his magic with the first shriek, since it might have been a Death Eater for all he knew. Now he hurls the half-formed spell, thinking very hard about how he wants her to _go away._ The shrieking stops, and smoke and dust obscures the portrait.

When Harry can see again, the portrait is gone.

“What did you _do_?”

“Got rid of it,” Harry says, turning with a small frown. “You don’t wear glasses, but you sound like you need them.”

“But I don’t know a spell that could just destroy a portrait like that,” Nott says, as if his not knowing it means the spell can’t exist. Harry is just about to point out this logical fallacy when Nott adds, “And I don’t know anyone whose body would glow when they cast it.”

“ _Glow_?” Harry looks down, but the glow of the runic circles, which he’s certain was there if Nott bothered to comment on it, has faded. He sighs. “It’s not a side-effect that I thought about before. Or noticed. Of course, there was no one before this to see me and tell me it happened.”

“But what did you _do_?”

Harry hesitates, then decides that Nott’s wide eyes and trembling hand are worse than they were when they were outside with the Muggles, and strips off his robe and then his shirt. He turns so Nott can see the runic circle on his back. From the sharp gasp Nott makes, he sees it, all right.

“I drew runic circles on myself,” Harry explains, glancing back at Nott. “My body is the only thing that absolutely no one can take away from me without killing me. And they act together to give me magic of various kinds. I draw magic from the air all the time, and they make the spells half-formed before they can be cast—”

“You _carved circles in your flesh._ ”

“I had to, if I wanted them to work.” Harry frowns down at the circle on his right side, the one that will Portkey him back to the Leaky Cauldron. “But I’ll have to redo them because I can’t stay where I was staying anymore.”

Nott doesn’t say anything. Harry looks up and finds Nott staring at him with the flush to his cheeks that he had when they were talking about his father’s journals. Harry shakes his head. He’s never, ever going to understand people.

Then an idea comes to him, and Harry smiles. Why not? He thought of creating runic circles, or one big one, that would replace his protective magic, but he might as well carve one into his flesh that will do that and make it permanent around him, since he has to redo the circles anyway.

“Can you—put your clothes back on? We need to find the locket Horcrux and get out of here.”

Harry turns back to Nott and sees him averting his eyes. Maybe he’s not that used to nakedness, at that, or even half-nakedness. From what he says, he grew up with no siblings and only his father, and Slytherin has a reputation as the most prudish of the Houses.

“Of course. Sorry, Nott.”

“And can you call me Theodore?”

“Er, sure, if you want,” Harry says, nonplused now. He noticed Theodore calling him by his first name, but he didn’t see a reason to change things or call attention to it. If Theodore wants to change things, though, Harry can live with that. He shrugs at Theodore, smiles, and nods at the stairs. “Upstairs or downstairs?”

Theodore opens his mouth, and then another interruption appears.

“Evil filth be destroying Mistress’s portrait!”

Harry blinks at the wizened house-elf that’s standing on the stairs, wringing his hands and staring at the empty wall with great tragic eyes. He has grey hair, or sort of; it’s hard to tell if it’s that color from age or dirt. He has knees that seem to have turned backwards, and huge green eyes that shimmer with tears.

Harry has no idea who he is, and he feels sorry for the poor creature shut up here for years, probably by himself except for that insane portrait. But at least the elf might know where the Horcrux is. “Have you seen a golden locket around?”

The elf spins and stares at him. Then he screams, “Filth not be taking Master Regulus’s locket!” and charges.

Harry conjures a shield wall that holds the elf back. He tries to pop around it, but Harry has thought of that, and the shield extends around him and Theodore and won’t let anyone except them perform magic in it. Harry frowns at the elf and says, “If you don’t want to say, don’t. We’re not going to steal it, though. It’s a Horcrux, and it belongs to V—a real bastard, and we’re going to destroy it.”

It’s as though those words themselves are an incantation. The elf freezes and stares up at Harry. “You be destroying Master Regulus’s locket?”

“Yes. We know how to do it. We’ve already destroyed another one.” Harry glances back at Theodore and sees his mouth firming, as if he disapproves of Harry telling the elf so much. Harry shrugs. Well, it’s his choice. And it’s not as though the elf has shown any indication before this to charge off and inform people about Horcruxes.

“Kreacher be getting Master Regulus’s locket,” the elf whispers, subdued, and vanishes.

Harry smiles. “Well, that was easy.”

“You’re insane, Potter.”

“I thought we were calling each other by our first names now, Theodore.” Harry turns around and pouts at him. “My feelings are hurt.”

Theodore actually opens his mouth as if to apologize, and then falls silent with a narrow-eyed glance at Harry. “You are infuriating.”

“I don’t see why,” Harry says, and smiles at him, and turns back to the house-elf as he appears again. “Thank you, Kreacher? That’s your name, right?”

“No one bes asking,” the elf says direfully, and lets the locket fall towards Harry’s hand. Harry has already conjured a piece of silk, though, and uses that to wrap the locket. It’s a gaudy thing, gleaming silver other than the emerald serpent shape on the front. It also feels quieter than the diary, maybe because someone could write in the diary easily but it would take more effort to interact with the locket.

“I’m asking,” Harry says, and puts the locket away in a pouch hanging from his belt. “Thank you, Kreacher. I promise you it will be destroyed.” He glances over his shoulder at Theodore. “Can you send a Pensieve memory through the post?”

“You could bottle it and give the owl instructions to be careful,” Theodore says doubtfully. “Which means that we shouldn’t use your Merlin.” Harry grins, and Theodore smiles back as if against his will. “But who do you want to send it to?”

“I was going to send Kreacher a Pensieve memory of us destroying the locket.”

Both Kreacher and Theodore stare at him. Harry sighs. He _really_ doesn’t understand people. He’s rude without meaning to be, and then when he offers to do something polite, everyone acts like it’s the most scandalous idea ever.

The sooner he gets back under the protective magic and people can ignore him again, the better for him and them.

“Kreacher would be liking that,” the elf whispers, wringing his hands.

“We can do that,” Theodore says, after a glance at Harry that he seems to know means he can’t suggest differently. “But we’ll have to be careful with the owl, like I said, and you should watch the memory beforehand, to make sure that it contains exactly what you want it to contain.”

“That’s no problem if you have a Pensieve,” Harry says, and waits for Theodore to nod again before he glances at the elf. “Thank you, Kreacher.”

Kreacher nods uncertainly one more time, and then vanishes. Theodore turns to Harry as they leave the house.

“Most wizards don’t treat house-elves like people, you know,” he says. “I’m sure the Blacks who used to live there probably didn’t, or the elf wouldn’t be so—insane.”

“I’m not most wizards,” Harry says, although he’s pleased to have an explanation of why everyone was staring at him like he was mad. “We’ll do this, and then Kreacher won’t come to your house and try to steal the locket back or something. We’ve got to worry he might do that, if he’s protected it for this long and thinks of it as something that belongs to his dead master instead of That Bastard.”

Theodore studies him with wide grey eyes for a moment more, then nods. At least he doesn’t try to protest again, either when he’s destroying the locket with Fiendfyre or when Harry sends a copy of the Pensieve memory of the destruction to Kreacher with one of Theodore’s calmer barn owls.

But Harry does wake up that evening, after three hours of sleep, and see Theodore standing in his doorway. From the tilt of his head, he’s staring at Harry the way he did in Number Twelve earlier today.

Then he turns around and walks away.

 _People are very, very strange,_ Harry thinks as he curls up and goes back to sleep, _magical or not, wizard or elven._


	6. Chapter 6

Harry sits back as he watches his letter to Longbottom fly away with Merlin. He included the list of Horcruxes in the vision and his and Theodore’s speculations about where they were, instructions for the only method they know works to destroy them, and Pensieve memories in vials of both the diary’s and the locket’s destruction. Merlin insisted on carrying them this time, and Theodore talked sternly to him about breaking the vials and losing the memories. From Merlin’s soft hoots, he actually listened.

Harry tried asking Merlin why he’s with Harry when he likes other people so much better and certainly they would be willing to give a magnificent owl like him treats and space in their homes, but he got a haughty stare and an attempted nose-removal for his troubles. Owls are strange, too.

“What will you do now?”

Harry glances over his shoulder at Theodore. He’s standing in the arched doorway that all owleries seem to have, even when they’re just a small stone room at the top of the house like this one. “Oh, hello. I think I’m going to start studying runes in earnest to resurrect my protective magic.”

Theodore goes absolutely still, his hands resting on the stones. Writing the letter to Longbottom and considering what to include and what not to took almost all day, so it’s dusk now, and Harry has trouble seeing his face, but he has the feeling that he wouldn’t understand the expression on it even if he _could_ see it clearly. “You—want to disappear again?”

“Yes,” Harry says, puzzled. “I thought I mentioned that several times.”

“I thought you were speculating,” Theodore says, coming a few steps towards him, and yes, Harry was right. Theodore’s face is clearer now in the moonlight falling through the windows, but he still doesn’t understand the expression. “Or giving in to wishful thinking. Why would you _want_ to disappear again?” He reaches out, and his fingers close around Harry’s arm almost like Merlin’s talons. “You have NEWTS to study for.”

“I think I should delay NEWTS a year anyway. It’s not like I can go back to Hogwarts to study with the ban on non-purebloods, and if That Bastard takes over, I’ll have to leave the country. If Longbottom defeats him, I can study then along with all the other Muggleborns and half-bloods whose education is being disrupted.”

“That doesn’t answer the question about why you want to go back behind the protective magic.”

Harry sighs. “You saw the way Kreacher stared at me yesterday, and the way _you_ did, and you can say that?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I don’t belong in this world,” Harry says, waving his hand around the owlery and making the birds start a little, but really meaning the whole wizarding world. “Maybe I would have if I’d grown up in it, but I grew up outside it, and then no one remembered who I was until a week ago. I don’t know how to act with people. I don’t know how to do some normal magic. I don’t know how to treat house-elves. I don’t have parents or family or—anyone who really cares what happens to me.”

“That’s not true,” Theodore says fiercely.

“Well, yes, okay, there’s Lupin, but—”

“There’s also me.”

Harry stares at him. Then he says, “I mean. I said the debt was settled between us, and then I unfairly called on you to give me shelter when you should have just been able to ignore me. I’m the one taking advantage of you, if anything.”

Theodore shakes his head. He has an intense expression on his face now. At least Harry thinks he’s reading _this_ one correctly. “I chose to give you that shelter. I want—to know you, Harry Potter. I want to know what kind of mind saw me in the library one day and decided to just invent the rune that changed my life.”

He sounds like he has some grand speech planned, but Harry interrupts, because he can’t let Theodore continue in that mistake. “I didn’t decide that. I was already researching runes, and I was looking for something that could help you, but also something that could help me. I’m not as compassionate as you’re making me out to be.”

“You’re still more compassionate than anyone in my life has been.”

“You didn’t have—friends in Slytherin?”

“Did you ever see me with them?” Theodore’s mouth twists as if he’s drawn a rune wrong.

“No, but before fourth year, I didn’t pay you that much attention. You were just one among several Slytherins. Malfoy got on my nerves, but the others were just a blur to me.”

Theodore jerks his head in a motion that could mean anything. Harry is still paying attention to him, though, still letting Theodore grip his arm, and maybe that reassures Theodore; at least the tumble of words seems a little calmer than it might have been. “I didn’t have _friends_ in Slytherin. I had people who wanted to take advantage of me, and some people who hoped they could lure me into the Death Eaters or get updates on my father through me. There are no friendships possible with people like that. Maybe some of the others did better. I think Malfoy and Zabini were really friends, I don’t know. But not me. You’re the only person I would trust, Harry. The only person I would go to a grimy old house with and give shelter in the only home I have for myself and trust to protect me and talk to like this.”

He stops, panting. Harry squeezes his hand a little. “And you don’t want to lose that because I’ve gone back under my protective magic.”

Theodore swallows and nods. His grip is no longer painful, which lessens Harry’s longing to get away from it. He thinks, glancing at the other birds in the Owlery and out the window where Merlin has taken his letter. It’s—

“But you would forget about me if I went back under the magic,” he murmurs. “Other than the letters I wrote you. So you wouldn’t be hurt.”

“You’re telling me losing my _only friend_ wouldn’t hurt?”

“I mean, you wouldn’t remember the pain.”

Theodore leans closer to him, his expression fierce. “And that somehow makes it _better_? You’re willing to hurt me that way?”

Harry shudders a little, because no, he doesn’t like to think of that. He doesn’t like hurting people. He would even be unwilling to destroy the Horcruxes if they didn’t belong to Voldemort, and he has never been easy about essentially stealing the Leaky Cauldron room from Tom.

But he does say again, “I don’t belong in this world.”

“Give people a chance to know you. Give them a chance to help you.” Theodore’s fingers curl under his chin, and lift it. “Please. You remember what happened when we were in that corridor in Hogwarts?”

Harry nods. “When I revealed myself to you?”

“Yes. I kissed you. Do you know why?”

Harry feels something heavy settle in his stomach. “I didn’t then, but hearing that you didn’t have any friends in Slytherin…did you choose me out of desperation? I’d hate to be a choice someone made in desperation.”

Theodore shakes his head and leans his forehead against Harry’s. Harry can’t really see him and his eyes cross trying, but maybe the point isn’t to read every nuance on his face, he thinks a second later.

“Maybe I made the only choice I could,” Theodore breathed. “But the only choice doesn’t have to be a bad one. If you knew how much your intelligence strikes me, and your beauty—”

“ _Beauty._ ” Harry says it flatly. He knows that he has crooked glasses and sallow skin and a mess of a hairstyle. It’s probably worse right now after ducking away from Merlin’s talons.

“Just listen,” Theodore says, and presses closer. “Yes, beauty. I’m not necessarily talking about just face and form, although those are worth more than you want to acknowledge. But I also mean that you’re kind and have a sense of humor and you don’t want to cause people pain and—if you knew how rare those people had been in my _life._ ”

“Then you have low standards, is what you’re saying.”

Theodore huffs a laugh and steps back, but only far enough to bring his face into the moonlight again, and loop his fingers around Harry’s. “Won’t you at least try? Or do you find me disgusting? Or do you not like blokes?”

Harry hesitates. “I never considered dating someone or getting married. The protective magic would have hidden me from anyone unless I made an enormous effort, and probably destroyed it.”

“And now it’s gone.”

Harry closes his eyes and nods. “If I—if I just pretend that it’s gone forever, and I date you, and it doesn’t work out, where does that leave me?”

“In a world you could revolutionize with your Runes discoveries.” Theodore shakes his arm a little, making Harry open his eyes and look at him. “Did you not _realize_ that multiple people have been searching for ways to invent rituals that interact with Astronomy and create runic circles that work together on your body the way you did? For _centuries_? You’re brilliant, Harry. You don’t need me. It’s very much the other way around.”

Harry stares at him with his mouth falling open a little. Yes, on some level, he knew his Runes discoveries were new, or it would have been easier to find what he wanted in books, but—

But he never thought that he was coming up with something _completely_ new. If anything, he thought he was hacking a new path through a well-traveled jungle, and someday he would reach the right path and smack himself over the head with how much simpler following it would have been.

“Harry,” Theodore says in a low voice. “You haven’t made much clear about what _you_ want.”

“I just wanted a safe place to stay,” Harry mutters. “The reason I keep saying I don’t belong in this world is that I’m so _inexperienced._ I barely know how friendship works. Or sex, either.” He meets Theodore’s eyes, shadowed as they are, because he knows he won’t find mockery there. “If you want to try for it…”

“And your only choice is me?” Theodore’s hands are tight on Harry’s shoulders now despite his light tone, as he leans closer again.

“I’d rather you than anyone else I observed,” Harry says, the most honest thing right now, and then Theodore kisses him for the second time.

It’s soft and warm, and much less surprising now that Harry knew it was coming. He prefers this way, he thinks. He tightens his hands on Theodore’s hips and leans in, gently tapping with his tongue until Theodore opens his mouth with a little gasp.

The inside of Theodore’s mouth is even warmer, and Harry shifts as he hardens. Theodore presses in until their foreheads are touching again, with a little murmur, and Harry opens his legs and feels Theodore.

“We could—” Theodore does say then, which means he’s got enough distance between their mouths to say it, which is unacceptable.

Harry kisses him soundly once more and says, “Among the experiences I missed out on is snogging in some secluded area in Hogwarts,” and then urges Theodore back against the wall of the owlery as he gasps in surprise.

For the first time in his life, Harry presses against someone else and rocks _just so_ , and he’s thrilled to discover that this is one thing he didn’t muck up by not understanding people. And then he’s just thrilled with how it feels.

Theodore rides along with him, mouth wide open and eyes dazed, until the moment before he comes. Then he sharpens all at once, and shoves a leg between Harry’s thighs and holds still for a long moment.

Harry grunts in shock as he suddenly has a firmer surface to press against, and then he’s gone, high and flying, _good_ in a way that didn’t have a name until now. He sags forwards with his forehead on Theodore’s shoulder and steps back with a little gasp, shaking his head.

“That was—satisfying,” he says.

“And not at all bad for a first time.”

Theodore is busying himself with straightening his clothes and casting Cleaning Charms, but Harry can hear the tremor in his voice, now that he’s looking for it. _Maybe people are easier to understand after sex,_ he thinks, as he steps forwards and kisses Theodore, curling one hand around his left one.

Theodore stands there and kisses back until Harry draws away to whisper, “It was _great._ Let’s go downstairs and do that again.”

*

Merlin gets back early the next morning, trying to drop both Longbottom’s letter in front of Harry and a load of feces on Harry’s head. Harry invokes his runic circle that defends against physical objects and watches as the shit bounces back up and into Merlin’s tail feathers.

Merlin lands on his perch, staring, so horrified that he apparently can’t even make threatening noises.

“Serves you right,” Harry says, and ignores Theodore’s wide eyes at the shimmer of light through his robes as he checks over the letter. He supposes it isn’t beyond the Death Eaters to set up a trap for letters going to Longbottom and send false messages back, although Harry thinks Merlin probably would have sensed that and flown away.

But the letter’s clean. Harry tears it open and laughs aloud.

“What?” Theodore asks, leaning forwards.

“It’s a long list of demands as to how I knew about the Horcruxes, even though I explained about the protective magic and he remembers how I attended those sessions in Dumbledore’s office with him,” Harry mutters, shaking his head as he scans through the letter. “And I sent him Occlumency books—”

“Why?”

“I knew he had a connection with That Bastard through his scar. It must be the Horcrux in him, now that I think of it. And Dumbledore had Snape trying to teach Longbottom, which of course did worse than no good at all. So he acknowledges that, but then accuses me of ‘nefarious Slytherin tactics.’ Apparently my spell breaking didn’t make him remember that I was actually in Ravenclaw.”

“You sent him _books_?”

“Yes?” Harry looks up and blinks at the expression on Theodore’s face. Already they’re back at things he doesn’t understand again. “Why is that a problem?”

“You didn’t send _me_ books. And what if he wants to meet with you and thank you or something?” From the look of it, Theodore’s breakfast tea has really upset him.

“Believe me, Theodore, not everyone thinks ‘thanking someone’ means ‘sticking your tongue down their throat.’”

Theodore refuses to smile, but a blush does rise up in his cheeks. “You know what I mean.”

“I know what you mean, but you mean more to me than he does,” Harry says quietly. He pushes away his breakfast and the letter and focuses entirely on Theodore, because he needs it, for whatever reason. “He might be the one who saves the world, but you were the one who wrote back to me and kissed me. And went with me to the creepy old Black house when you didn’t have to. And inspired me with so much—”

“You’d better not say _pity._ ”

“Inspiration,” Harry continues smoothly, “that I researched that protective rune for you. In a way, you could say that you’re the foundation of what I’ve achieved in Runes. The person who inspired me to try my best.”

Theodore is staring at him with slightly parted lips. “Did you get that out of a book or something?”

“How could I get that out of a book? Books are short on people rescuing each other with Ancient Runes. Even wizarding books.”

Theodore laughs, free and aloud, and finally picks up his spoon again. “Fine. Write back to Longbottom and have your little information-romance with him. I know what I have.”

 _Sometimes, I’m not sure either of us does,_ Harry thinks, but he goes back to his room to write a reassuring letter to Longbottom and some clarification, and some suggestions on what Longbottom should do with the Horcrux in himself, since he could hardly survive a strike of Fiendfyre.

And then he goes to the library. He’s taken to heart what Theodore said about not hiding again _completely,_ but he’d still like to hide again when he wants to. He just finds the thought of interacting with dozens of people in a day the way he would have to if he goes to Diagon Alley overwhelming.

*

“The bastard did it.”

Harry glances up. He was sunk in his own misery most of the morning because nothing he could find in Theodore’s library or the books he’s sent Merlin to fetch is like the protection he was gifted with. There are runes that keep someone safe while they’re in the runic circle or make someone invisible, but nothing that would make him utterly undetectable to scent and hearing and sight the way he was, while still making people move out of the way. And nothing that would make the objects he carries around with him invisible, which is important.

“What bastard did what?” Harry asks, snapping himself out of his mood, while Theodore glares at him pointedly.

“Made Snape the Headmaster of Hogwarts,” Theodore says darkly, and puts the paper on the table.

Harry reads through the story with growing disbelief. Yes, Snape is Headmaster of Hogwarts, and Muggleborn students are encouraged to “register for their own sakes,” and half-bloods will be considered for admission to Hogwarts “on an individual basis.” It’s much more blatant than Harry expected it to be.

And Snape being Headmaster when he killed the previous Headmaster is just as open a proclamation as it can be that the Death Eaters are in control and don’t care what other people know, or think they know. Harry hopes Longbottom is staying safe.

“Why are Muggleborns being asked to register?” he asks, handing the paper back to Theodore. “Since they aren’t being allowed at Hogwarts as students, anyway?”

“Apparently, there’s a commission being set up.” Theodore doesn’t sound as outraged as he does about Snape being Headmaster, but then, he is a pureblood, so Harry can’t really expect him to be. “To _investigate_ where their magic comes from. They aren’t saying it yet, but the implications in the articles I’ve read are that they’re going to say all Muggleborns stole magic from purebloods.”

“And then?”

“What?”

“What are they going to do with them after that?” Harry’s breath is huffing past his lips despite himself, his hands clenched on his lap. This all seems terribly familiar, from the Muggle history books that he read when trying to add to his own knowledge of wizarding history because Binns is a terrible teacher. “Azkaban couldn’t hold them all, and I doubt they’d be satisfied with exiling them to the Muggle world, because then they couldn’t control them or find them. Are they going to execute them? Send them somewhere?”

“I—don’t know.” Theodore looks through the newspaper article again, then shakes his head. “It doesn’t say. Harry? What is it? Are you all right?”

“There’s Muggle history I know,” Harry says flatly, and ignores the face that Theodore makes at the word “Muggle.” “It starts with things like this, with people having to register and having their things taken away from them, and it ends up with them being sent somewhere else. Camps, usually. Where they’re worked to death, or executed.”

Theodore recoils. “But why would Muggles do that? They’re all the same. They can’t do magic. That should be a common bond between them!”

“Just like all wizards and witches get along because of being able to do magic?”

“You have a point.” Theodore sounds like he wishes Harry didn’t. He frowns at the newspaper again. “But surely even if they do start executing Muggleborns or taking them somewhere else for death, they’re not going to talk in the paper about it? How are we going to find out and stop them?”

“You want to join me in stopping them?”

“Of course I do. You won’t be happy if you don’t, and I don’t think a bunch of people deserve to be executed just because of who they were born.”

Harry eyes Theodore in spite of the fact that he would welcome the help. It’s not like he can rely on his protective magic to sneak around in offices and eavesdrop on conversations now, after all. “I thought you were a blood purist who just didn’t want to be a Death Eater.”

Theodore sighs. “It was a half-blood who saved me. My father would have sacrificed me on the altar of blood purity. My companions in Slytherin—made bad choices. Yes, I’ll follow you, but I want some kind of plan, Harry. How in the world are we going to prevent what they’re going to do?”

Harry can’t help the smile that crosses his lips. “Let me spend some time in the library, and we’ll soon have one.”

*

“Hello, Professor Lupin.”

“Please call me Remus, Harry. I haven’t been a professor in a long time. And I don’t deserve a respectful title when I failed you—so badly.”

Harry pauses before he sits down across from Remus at the little outdoor table. They’re meeting at a small restaurant not far from Diagon Alley. Harry judged it the safest place, and Lupin said in his letter that he had no trouble getting there.

But the man in the patched suit who leans forwards and stares hungrily at Harry is exuding too much regret and guilt. Harry sighs silently to himself as he sits down after all. This is going to be a problem.

“I can’t believe I didn’t _remember_ my best friends’ son,” Lupin is rambling on, one hand clutching the side of his head as if he thinks that the lost memories are his own fault. “I _taught_ you. I even talked to you once! In depth! And I just forgot like you didn’t matter—”

“It’s all right, sir,” Harry interrupts. He can’t bring himself to call Lupin by his first name just yet, and it has nothing to do with respect. Harry got used to addressing everyone in his life by last name when he arrived at Hogwarts, and before that, he really had no one to talk to either way. Calling Theodore by his first name still feels painfully intimate.

“No, it isn’t! I can’t believe I—”

“It was a very powerful protective spell.” Harry picks up the menu lying in front of them as a gesture of self-defense and looks over it. He keeps talking without looking at Lupin, hoping that will encourage the man to calm the hell down. “It was set when I was still a child, and it expired on my seventeenth birthday, when people who had interacted with me in the past got their memories back. I don’t blame you, sir, and I hope you won’t blame yourself.”

Lupin finally sighs and nods when Harry picks out a simple sandwich, indicating he wants the same one. “If you say so, Harry. Now. I’m very eager to listen to what you want, of course. I wanted to know if you’d consider joining the Order of the Phoenix.”

“Hmm. That’s been restarted?” Harry listened to some lessons Longbottom had with Dumbledore where they talked about it, but it was almost always the historical one. The modern Order didn’t seem to do anything very much, except send some people on diplomatic missions to the giants and the like (which didn’t work).

“Yes. I’m very pleased to find that you know of it.” Lupin smiles, and his eyes shine a little. “Minerva McGonagall is doing what she can to help us, although with the Death Eater takeover of the school, she can’t assume the place of leadership like she was meant to. And I’m helping. And of course Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley and the rest of the Weasleys.” He seems to hesitate.

“Don’t worry, I know more about Longbottom’s mission than you probably assume.”

Lupin leans back as their sandwiches pop onto the table between them. Harry picks up his own cheese one and says, “Mustard?”, and a little pot of mustard follows.

“Neville did mention that he got help from an unexpected source. You?”

“Mm-hmm.” Harry smiles as he eats. Theodore’s house-elf, who’s called Misty, is a fine cook, but she basically never makes plain food except for breakfast, and Harry’s years of living in the Muggle world and the Leaky Cauldron have accustomed him to it. “I don’t know if there’s anything else I can do about the quest he’s on, though. I wanted to help the Muggleborns.”

“To escape the country? I know of some who could use an escort—”

“I want to stop them from being executed or going to camps.” Harry pauses when Lupin flinches. “So you know something about Muggle history. You know what’s probably coming.”

“Yes, but I think the Order is too small and too focused on fighting You-Know-Who to really oppose it. I’m sorry.” Lupin is poking at his own sandwich, his face ill.

“Okay.” Harry can’t say that he didn’t expect that answer. He swallows the last of his own sandwich and leans back in his chair. “So would _you_ personally help us fight any Muggleborn relocation and execution orders?”

“I—I have a wife and a child on the way.”

“Oh,” Harry says, deeply surprised. Lupin didn’t mention them in the letter, and Harry is pretty sure that he wasn’t married when he taught at Hogwarts, but then again, he didn’t pay all that much attention to the Defense professor outside the one conversation he had with Neville about Harry’s parents. “Well, that’s fine. If I can keep you as a safe contact and have a friendship with you, that would work out.”

“And you think you can do this all on your own? Harry, please. I don’t want to see you lose your life when I’ve just found you again. I really think working with the Order would be best.”

“I’ve done my part for you. I’ve helped Longbottom succeed at things he’s going to _have_ to succeed at to bring down Voldemort.” At least Lupin doesn’t flinch like Theodore when Harry mentions the name. “I’m going to do this.”

“It’s a waste, though.” Lupin is leaning forwards, and there’s something lean and wolfish about his face that makes Harry wonder, for the first time, if he might be a werewolf. Yes, he was sick around the full moon multiple times in their class, wasn’t he? And there are old scars on his face that might very well come from a werewolf attack, although they’re faint enough that Harry never noticed them before. The shine in his eyes is also sort of like the shine an animal’s would get—

“Harry, are you listening to me?”

Harry jumps and then smiles sheepishly at Lupin. “Sorry. I go off on these kinds of research-flights connecting different ideas, and forget to pay attention to the world around me.”

“Then that makes me worry even more about you going off and doing this on your own. Please, Harry, I see so much of your parents in you. I’d like to know you better. Come and work with the Order, and you’ll be protected.”

“I didn’t say I was alone, though. I said _we_. I have someone who’s sheltering me and who’ll be at my side when we start doing something about the Muggleborn Registration Commission.”

“Who?”

Harry just raises an eyebrow. Lupin hasn’t confided in him about a lot of things, like the wife and child. Fuck if Harry is going to expose Theodore to him now.

“I won’t ask, then.” Lupin gives Harry a sweet smile that makes Harry see suddenly why his parents might have trusted the man. “But I will ask that you pay close attention to this person. Make sure that you know you can trust them. There’s—so much history in our last few decades of being betrayed by false friends.”

Harry nods. He knows Lupin must be thinking of Pettigrew, but he himself is thinking of Snape and how Snape turned on the Headmaster, and how Theodore can’t trust the last living member of his family.

“And I very much would like to get to know you,” Lupin says. He’s eating his sandwich now, and seems more relaxed. “I never had any friends in Ravenclaw House. Everyone I was close to in Hogwarts was in Gryffindor, as I was. So what is it like?”

*

“Lupin won’t help us.”

Harry shakes his head as he steps through the door of Theodore’s cottage and takes off his cloak. “No. He was actually apologetic about it, although he wanted me to join the Order of the Phoenix, but he’s married and has a child on the way, so he has a pretty good excuse not to get involved in something more dangerous than that.”

Theodore stares at him. “He found someone who would marry a werewolf?”

“So he _is_ one!” Harry snaps his fingers as he walks towards the library. “You know, I thought so, but I wasn’t sure.”

“Only you must not have paid enough attention to know that.”

“Then why didn’t he get sacked because of it?”

Theodore sighs as he follows Harry into the library. “All right, so I’m used to thinking of just people in Slytherin House again. We all knew because Professor Snape made a habit of dropping hints to us. I think he had some personal reason to distrust Lupin.”

“Lupin said something about playing pranks on Slytherins when I was talking to him today. Maybe one of them was Professor Snape.”

“That would make sense.” Theodore sits down in the chair next to him. “And I think Lupin’s not coming back did have something to do with his being a werewolf, but I don’t know exactly. There was just some escapade that supposedly happened the night Lestrange came to the castle.”

Harry shrugs. He supposes it doesn’t matter. He isn’t afraid of Lupin. “You don’t need to sit here with me, you know. I’m probably going to be very boring.”

“What do you mean?”

“Reading for hours and writing down notes that don’t make any sense. Sometimes I get ink in my ear because I use my quill to scratch it.”

“I think that’s adorable,” Theodore says firmly. “Besides, I can help, as long as I know what we’re searching for.” He reaches for one of the books on Runes Harry has lying in front of him and lifts an expectant eyebrow.

“I told you that I wanted to do research on reestablishing my protective magic—”

“And I told you that you didn’t have to.” Theodore’s voice is low and hurt.

“Not for me, calm down.” Harry rolls his eyes. “But it occurs to me that if we can find something like the spell that was used on me, but use it for Muggleborns and just target it towards the people who are trying to find them and destroy them…”

Theodore blinks. “Give me that book,” he says, and snatches the one in front of Harry, switching it for the one he’s already holding.

Harry chuckles and faces his own pile of notes. He suspects it’s the research challenge that’s exciting Theodore, as well as the relatively safe way to work with Harry, and not some new impulse of compassion. But that doesn’t matter, as long as it works.

Harry’s long thought results are better than intentions.

*

“You didn’t have any luck identifying the actual charm that someone cast on you?”

“Oh, I found that out a few hours ago. Why I don’t know is why it’s so powerful, and I have to know that if I’m going to use it to help the Muggleborns.”

Theodore’s silence across the table is helpful for a few minutes, but then it starts to feel weird. Harry looks up and sees that Theodore’s hands are clenched in front of him, his eyes wide and staring directly at Harry.

“What?” Harry adds.

“You didn’t tell me that you found it? You let me waste my own efforts?”

“You said that you were researching ways to create a runic circle that’s big enough but also hard to notice. When did you switch to the spell that was cast to keep me safe?”

They stare at each other in mutual antagonism for a few moments—or maybe it’s antagonism for Theodore. Harry just feels like he doesn’t really understand what’s going on. Then Theodore sighs. “Yes, all right, perhaps I should have told you that I was switching my focus. But I thought you would notice because I was picking up that book you were using first.”

Harry sighs in turn and rubs his face. His eyes are stinging a bit from squinting at print that’s too small. “Theodore, I don’t know what to say. This is—the way I am when I start researching. I get really focused and it’s hard for me to even _think_ about anything else.”

“What about dinner?” Theodore seems to be looking at the pendulum clock near the entrance of the library, which Harry can’t see since it’s behind his shoulder. “Misty should be ready to serve us our food.”

“All right.” Harry scribbles down a quick note to himself and leaves a bookmark in the tome as he stands up. His legs tremble beneath him, and he frowns. Did he eat lunch? He thought he did. But when he glances over, there’s an empty plate in front of Theodore, and nothing on his side of the table.

“I didn’t eat lunch, did I?”

“I thought you’d ordered a quick snack from Misty when I went to the bathroom.”

“No,” Harry says, and falls into step beside Theodore as they head for the dining room.

“How did you take care of yourself, when you were under the charm?”

“I ate when I was hungry and slept when I was tired and went to the loo when I needed to do that.”

Theodore shakes his head a little as he settles into place on the other side of the table. “I’m beginning to realize how completely different you are from anyone else I’ve ever met.” Beef Wellington appears in front of them, and Theodore watches to make sure Harry takes the first bite before he does. “And I’m sort of amazed that you haven’t had more trouble coming out from under the charm.”

Harry blinks. “Oh, that’s simple enough. I’ve been doing things that I’ve been good at, and I met Lupin in a quiet place, and I’ve mostly been with you since my birthday. And I wrote to Longbottom with an owl.”

“So you’re saying being around lots of people is the problem.”

“Lots of people who might pay attention to me.” Harry has to put down his fork for a second. Honestly, his stomach is squirming so hard as he thinks about what might happen after the end of the war—if it’s ever safe for him to go back to Hogwarts—that he would probably drop it. “I don’t want that. I never did, even if I used to think about how nice it would be to have friends.”

“It’s all right,” Theodore says, calmly and with a confident air that Harry could see himself clinging to. He’s going to have to make sure he doesn’t get too dependent on Theodore, then. “I’ll be here, and I’ll help you navigate things.”

Harry frowns at him. “I notice there’s no mention of just letting me stay at home.”

Theodore smiles with some triumph. “I didn’t realize you regarded this cottage as home. But, Harry, more than that, you need to be _known_. I meant it when I said you’re a genius at Runes, and when people start to know what you’re planning to do for the Muggleborns, then your fame will only—”

“I’m not a Slytherin, Theodore.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“I’m not ambitious. I’m not going to tell anyone about what I’m doing for the Muggleborns. If we do this right, then when they get to reappear, people will just get the memories back the way they did of me after my charm ended, but they won’t know who did it. I don’t want to tell people. I don’t want _credit_ ,” Harry hastily adds as Theodore opens his mouth. “Let it just become part of the common repertoire of spells and runic circles that people use on a regular basis. I don’t want it connected to me.”

Theodore shakes his head slowly. “So even when you do something heroic, you won’t want to be known?”

“That’s right.” Harry is relieved, for a second, that Theodore is going to be reasonable about this, and then he sees the look on Theodore’s face as he stands up.

“You can’t live your life like that,” Theodore says, in a voice that’s low and passionate and shaking. “You can’t just expect people to _ignore_ you without that spell. That it happened at all is unnatural in the first place. I can’t think that whoever came up with it intended for everyone to turn a blind eye to you all your life. They probably just intended a few years of protection, or a decade of lesser protection. Harry, you have to live in the world the way it is, not go back under your protection spell.”

“I don’t know _how_!”

“And I told you that I would help you!”

“But I don’t _want_ to be helped! I _want_ them to not look at me!”

Theodore shakes his head and then turns and walks away from the table. Harry watches him go with a curious helplessness. He’s sure that a normal person would know how to speak to Theodore and soothe him and say that he didn’t exactly mean it, and make everything all right again.

But if Harry was normal, he wouldn’t be sitting here at all.

In the end, he finishes a few more bites of dinner and goes back to the library. He doesn’t know how to be normal or how to be a good person, but he knows how to do research, so he’s going to do that, damn it.

*

“Did you ever go to bed last night?”

Harry drags his face off the book he was sleeping on, and rubs it. He finds ink on his fingers. That makes him flush more than the cool, judging way Theodore’s eyes are looking at him. He sighs. “No.”

Theodore sits down in the chair he took yesterday and just keeps watching him. Harry has read in more than one book that this is a tactic that the Aurors use, just keeping silent and letting people rush to fill the silence with words.

The problem is, it _works._ Harry feels the push at the edges of his mind, the fear that if he _doesn’t_ say something and make Theodore understand him, he might find himself on the streets without his only—

Friend? Lover? Ally?

“I’m not normal,” Harry says, looking down at the book again. His cheek probably holds the smeared note he was writing last night, on the precise measurements of the giant runic circle he would need to hide thousands of people. “I’m never going to be. I know why you’re pushing me to be better-known, but I can’t be.”

“All right,” Theodore says, in such a calm tone that Harry blinks at him in surprise. “Now it’s my turn. If you don’t adapt at least a little, we can’t stay together.”

Harry swallows. “Then—we can’t stay together.”

Surprise and hurt blows across Theodore’s face like a winter wind, and for a minute, Harry thinks he’s going to get up and stalk out of the library. But he doesn’t. He leans forwards and says, “Why not?”

“Because I _can’t_ change, Theodore. I can’t start being ambitious and loving crowds and selling my Runes skills to whoever will be in charge after That Bastard is defeated. I’m sorry, but I can’t be the kind of person you need me to be.”

“Did I say anything _at all_ about that being the kind of person I need you to be?”

“You want me to be a famous one.”

Theodore sighs. “I said that you _deserve_ to be famous, Harry. But I also said that I would help you navigate through this, didn’t I?”

“But why would you want to?”

Theodore rubs the sides of his eyes with tired fingers. “You saved my life, and my freedom, and my sanity,” he says, not looking at Harry. “My father would have forced me into being a Death Eater, and stolen my future from me, too. I think the Dark Lord is going to lose. You did _all that_ , and all you asked for was shelter in a house I already owned and a little help defeating the Dark Lord, which is a good thing for me, too. You’re brilliant in a way I’ve never seen. And you wonder why I want to stay near you?”

Harry stares at him. He’s honestly never thought about himself from that angle, before. “What—what would you need to change about me, then?”

Theodore drops his hands and stares at him. “I need you to listen to me when I make suggestions. And take care of your own health. And start thinking about what you’re going to be in the future, other than a recluse who’s good with Runes.”

Harry shuts his eyes. “When I think about walking down Diagon Alley and having people look at me—”

“Yes?”

“I want to be sick. I want to lock myself in a room and never come out.” Harry bows his head, shaking. “And that’s just people paying me ordinary attention. It would be so much worse if I was famous, Theodore. I saw what happened to Longbottom at Hogwarts. How can I _stand_ that?”

“We’ll take it a step at a time,” Theodore says, his voice warmer than it’s been since last night. He reaches across the table to take Harry’s hand. “Think about it this way. If people aren’t leaving you alone anymore, that means you don’t have to stand on your own, either.”

It does help, a little, to think about it that way. Harry clasps Theodore’s hand, harder, and Theodore’s fingers tighten until it might actually hurt to separate their hands.

It still feels alien. But Harry has someone who _wants_ to teach him how to fit in better. How many people can say that?

*

“And you’re sure this is the only way.” Theodore’s voice is smooth, which is his way of keeping emotion out of it. His fingers rap hard on the table beside Harry’s hand as he leans over Harry’s shoulder and stares down at the parchment with the huge runic circle Harry has traced.

Harry nods. He’s enlarged the parchment twice, and at that, this representation isn’t to scale. “This circle will move with them. Otherwise, the people we hid would have to stay in the same spot, and sooner or later That Bastard would find them. This way, we can cast the circle and they’ll have the protection with them anywhere, the way I did.”

Theodore’s hand moves up and squeezes the back of Harry’s neck. “Promise me that you won’t disappear with them.”

Harry leans back against him and smells the leather and glue of the library books without answering. Misty keeps them impeccably dusted, or Harry might imagine he smelt that, the lazy, drifting smell that characterized so much of his research at Hogwarts.

A wave of soft sickness strikes him. Even if he makes it back to the library at Hogwarts, things won’t be the same. People will mutter excuses as they brush past him. They’ll come up and ask if they can borrow a book that he’s using. Harry tenses, and his shoulders hunch.

“Harry.”

“I want to,” Harry whispers. “So badly. You have no idea.”

Theodore sounds for a second as though he’s going to swear, but one of the things he asked of Harry was honesty, and he’s smart enough to realize that’s what he’s getting. He rubs down the middle of Harry’s spine instead. Harry sighs and lets his head hang back.

“But you’ll position yourself on the outside of the circle instead,” Theodore says, and lets go of Harry to step around him and study the runic circle again. His hand shifts so that he’s holding Harry’s arm instead. “And you’ll use your life to power it.” Disapproval creeps into his voice.

“It’s the only way,” Harry says quietly. “Most of the time, a circle of this size requires a blood sacrifice. Obviously I don’t want to kill anyone.”

“I can think of a few people who deserve to die.”

Harry shakes his head. “I can’t.”

“Even though you participated in destroying the Horcruxes that help the Dark Lord to hang on to life?”

“Even then.” Harry turns so he’s looking Theodore in the eye. “I helped locate the twisted artifacts that he was using to cling to life. That’s not the same thing as standing in front of him and uttering a curse. I know I couldn’t do that.”

Theodore stands with his mouth pursed for a long moment, in a way that makes Harry think his voice is going to emerge as smooth. Then he sighs and nods. “You’ll be letting me cast the Everlasting Healing Charm and brew the Blood-Replenishers you’ll need.”

Harry has to smile. “Of course. I was never all that good with Potions even when Slughorn started teaching instead of Snape.”

“Good,” Theodore says, and then he kisses Harry and coaxes him into thinking about more pleasant things for the rest of the evening.

*

“I respect that this was the only completely magical place outdoors that you could think of which was large enough,” Theodore mutters, everything about him radiating displeasure into the air like heat, “but did you have to align the runic circle _with moonrise_?”

“Yes,” Harry says, and then doesn’t bother to say anything about it. He did try to explain the magical necessity for that already, and Theodore didn’t understand it. Harry doesn’t want to emphasize the gap again, or Theodore will think Harry is mocking his intelligence. He’s a little prickly sometimes, Harry’s found.

 _At least he doesn’t have a little prick,_ Harry thinks, and laughs, then lets the calm he’ll need for the runic circle flow into him.

He looks up through the leaves of the Forbidden Forest at the rising crescent moon, and nods. Then he lifts his wand in front of him, and closes his eyes. Magic shimmers and twists around him, in his head, but that doesn’t mean it’s not real.

Gradually, Harry sinks deep into his trance, and the magic becomes _more_ real for him than the things outside his head. Harry rests one hand against his right side, over his ribs, and the now-useless circle that would pull him back to the Leaky Cauldron room where he lived for so long if he invoked it.

This circle will require a powerful sacrifice rooted in his own magic. Harry can think of nothing better than a flesh-inscribed circle that’s now useless.

There’s no incantation for this. There couldn’t be, not when Harry is creating a runic circle unique in its size and effect. Instead, he focuses all the elements that he needs to pay attention to in his mind, including the sequence of runes he’s chosen, and then rips his will down in a sharp slash.

His right side tears open, the runes of that circle flying away from him. Harry opens his eyes and smiles as he watches the shapes, made of blood, funnel into the air.

Behind him, Theodore begins to chant, casting the Everlasting Healing Charm. It races against the damage the creation of the circle causes, healing Harry and then healing him again as the sacrifice continues on and on, more blood flowing out.

Merlin hoots menacingly from the tree behind him, the signal that Harry needs to take one of the Blood-Replenishing potions and a duty that the grey menace was _more_ than happy to take up. Harry snatches up a flask on the ground beside him and swallows. He feels strength briefly surge up through him, and then more blood flows out and he has to tilt his head back and focus on the moon.

Theodore expressed doubts about this part of the plan, Harry remembers dreamily. But Harry is absolutely settled and centered in himself, and he reaches out his hands and lifts them high.

The moonlight moves and bends with them.

“ _Gebo_ ,” Harry says simply, and the moon shudders in its course.

Its light ignites around him in the clearing, a waterfall that foams around him and is lit so intensely from within that it’s like standing in a rain of windchimes. Harry laughs aloud, and the blood spins away from him and joins with the moonlight, and Harry sketches the next rune of the circle in them both.

“ _Algiz!_ ”

The rune appears in front of him, and hovers off to the side, joining the blood-runes from the circle he had constructed on his side. Merlin hoots. Harry scoops up another potion and swallows it, listening to Theodore’s chant.

“ _Raido_ ,” he says, and the magic leaps and bubbles in his chest and joins the blood and the moonlight.

Harry closes his eyes. The final rune is hovering in front of him. The runes he’s cast so far would make Muggleborns and anyone else he wanted to protect disappear from the sight of those who wanted to harm them at night, but the final rune completes the protection and extends it to all twenty-four hours.

And it also makes it possible for those affected by the circle to still see and locate each other, and interact with those who have helpful or neutral intentions. Harry knows he has to cast it. It’s a necessity, a welling push to complete the circle, as righteous and needed as the last component in an Arithmancy equation.

Harry just didn’t tell Theodore about it, because he knew Theodore would have had hysterics.

Harry spreads his arms and hurls himself, with power and joy, into the middle of the casting.

“ _Sowilo_!”

There’s a howl that seems to come from every corner of the Forbidden Forest, or maybe that’s in Harry’s head, too. He turns his head and opens his eyes, and he knows what he’s seeing, and he’s glad that this is near the end of the ritual, because Theodore’s voice has faltered in the chant behind him.

The sun is shining in the midnight sky.

Harry gathers the sunlight that’s required and binds it into the circle with simple motions of his hands. Merlin hoots. Harry stoops down and gathers up the last Blood-Replenishing Potion and swallows it.

Then the circle flames into being in front of him, lines of light that trace the ley lines of the earth, that piece to the hearts of those who need protection from That Bastard’s regime, that shroud the minds of those who serve him, even passively. Harry laughs, and watches the circle race away to every corner of Britain. Beyond that, it will cross the sea and reach to Ireland, as well.

Harry sinks to his knees when it leaves, drained. The sun has vanished from the sky, so that should make Theodore less hysterical, he thinks, his mind fuzzy. His hands tremble, and he slumps on his side. At least he manages to make sure it isn’t the right side, which would probably be a bad idea. He’s fairly sure that his rib bones are exposed to the air right now.

“Harry!”

Harry glances up and smiles as Theodore leans over him. He’s pale and trembling, and Harry hopes that the Everlasting Healing Charm hasn’t taken too much of a toll on him. But Theodore’s powerful, and he was prepared. It _ought_ to be okay.

Harry yawns, and then yawns again. Right now, he does feel awfully sleepy. He lets his head slip to the side and his eyes close.

Theodore mutters something that might be a curse and then scoops Harry up with a Levitation Charm and jogs somewhere.

Harry isn’t really interested in where. And he doesn’t know why Theodore’s cursing like that. He did it, didn’t he? And it’s a _great_ magical accomplishment.

He knows he falls unconscious with a smile on his face.


	7. Chapter 7

“You are a reckless, stupid, irresponsible, immature _idiot._ ”

“You sure know a lot of adjectives.”

Theodore doesn’t seem to appreciate the compliment. He’s been pacing back and forth across Harry’s bedroom, but now he whirls around and stalks over to his bed and pins Harry with one hand on his shoulder. Not that he’d need to do much to pin Harry right now, Harry has to admit. It’s the morning after his casting of the circle, and he still can’t stand.

“Why would you _do_ something like that?” Theodore whispers. “Do you know how much power you would have had to call on to make it at all _safe_?”

“I mean, yes? Because I’m lying here, and I can feel the drain.” Harry shakes his head. “Theodore, it was fine. I could have drawn on more, but that kind of power would have killed me. That’s why I had to spend so much time researching the state of the moon and the best place to do it and so on. The books I originally found actually suggested that I do it at twilight, because then both the sun and moon could be in the sky, but without one celestial body having an advantage, I don’t think I would have survived. Did you know that magic performed at twilight is more dangerous than most people think, because—”

“I don’t care.”

Harry falls silent, blinking. Theodore sits beside him on the bed and then leans down. Harry thinks he’s going to get a kiss, but instead, Theodore curls up next to him, clinging to Harry with arms that feel desperate.

Harry touches his back. “Hey,” he says. “I’m here.”

“You so nearly _weren’t._ Why didn’t you tell me that you were summoning the sun like that? I could have hurt you when I faltered in the chant of the healing charm because I didn’t expect it.”

“I knew that if I did, you would say that the spell was too powerful and I couldn’t do it, and get upset at me.”

“As opposed to how thrilled I am with you right now,” Theodore snarls, and his arms tighten around Harry in a painful clasp that has Harry squirming away a little. The Healer Theodore took Harry to and then _Obliviated_ when they were done did a good job patching him up, but a big wound like that hurts. “Harry, you _have_ to take greater care with your own life! I think you’re used to disregarding some of the risks because they wouldn’t have been risks under the protection spell, but this is one that would always be that way no matter what. Promise me.”

“Promise you what? I think I can promise not to cast any more magical circles that envelop Great Britain and Ireland. I won’t have to.”

Theodore gives a low sound that’s maybe a snarl and maybe a sob, but sounds more likely to fall somewhere in the middle of them. Theodore rearranges them on the bed so that he can see Harry’s face.

“Promise me that you’ll do your best to survive this war.”

Harry blinks. “I always meant to. Why do you think I went to the trouble of drawing runic circles on my own body?”

Theodore eyes his bandaged right side darkly. “A circle you had no trouble sacrificing.”

Harry shrugs and cuddles closer to him, yawning as weariness sneaks up on him with a club. “I had to destroy it in a sacrifice like this. It was useless since I can’t go back to my room at the Leaky Cauldron anymore. If I’d tried to just erase it, I would have had to destroy all the other runic circles I’m carrying, too, because they’re all tuned to each other. Now it’s like I snapped the string on an instrument but left the others intact, and I can replace that circle. The instrument still plays.”

“I’m never going to understand your metaphors.” Theodore’s voice is resigned, but at least his fingers are gentle as he tugs Harry’s hair out of his eyes. “Where are you going to set the new runic circle to send you to?”

“Here, of course. It’s home.”

Theodore takes in a breath and might not release it at all, for all Harry knows. That’s sort of strange, but the next moment, Harry is asleep, so it doesn’t matter anyway.

*

“They’re appalled.”

“Who is?” It’s the first morning Harry has been well enough to come down to the little dining room for breakfast, two days after the ritual. Misty insisted that he take two Blood-Replenishing potions before he stood up, which is the first time Harry’s seen her. She’s about two feet tall, with huge green eyes, and a scowl she must have learned from Theodore.

Harry turns his mind away from Misty, and the house-elf magic he’s wondering if he might be able to duplicate, to see Theodore holding up a copy of the _Prophet._ “The Muggleborn Registration Commission. Quote, ‘I am shocked and appalled that people so dangerous to our society would run away and conceal all trace of themselves.’”

Harry shakes his head as he swallows a bit of his bowl of broth. Misty, or maybe Theodore, obviously thinks he’s not ready for _solid_ food yet. “They somehow always manage to find the stupidest person to interview. It seems to be a talent.”

“They probably train the reporters in it,” Theodore agrees, reading through a bit more of the paper, and then snorts. “Oh, listen to this. ‘This just shows that Muggleborns are stealing magic from pureblood kind. They could never be powerful enough to hide on their own.’”

Harry is a little relieved that it doesn’t sound like Voldemort’s regime suspects the Muggleborns had any help in hiding. “But then why are they a threat to purebloods at all, if they’re weak?”

“As if the Dark Lord and his Death Eaters make sense.” Theodore turns the paper over. “And you were right about them moving the Muggleborns somewhere else,” he adds, more somberly. “There’s someone raging on the back page that they wasted all this time preparing more _comfortable_ accommodations for the Muggleborns, and now they’re just gone.”

Harry drinks his orange juice, and beams at the table. He feels content with the world, even if he does sort of wish now that he’d told Theodore about the sun showing up in the ritual before he began it. He helped people, a lot of whom probably couldn’t have helped themselves. Some of them were children. And someday, they’ll be able to come out of hiding and interact with the world again.

Harry pauses. Why is he thinking that last part like it’s a good thing? If he was in their place, he would never want to emerge again.

Of course, his status and his experiences with hiding aren’t quite the same as those of people who are only in hiding because Voldemort is a wanker.

Voldemort…

“We should write to Longbottom and see what progress he’s made on destroying the Horcruxes,” Harry says, starting to shove back from the table.

“Stop.”

Harry freezes. Theodore never used that voice when he was scolding Harry before, or Harry probably would have obeyed before he thought about it. He glances at Theodore, and sees him scowling down at Harry, his hands on his hips.

“ _I_ am going to write to Longbottom,” Theodore says. “It’s not like it’s a huge amount of exertion, and your owl likes me better than he does you anyway.”

“If it’s not a huge amount of exertion, then there’s no reason why I shouldn’t be able to do it.”

Harry thinks he’s made a logical argument, and doesn’t understand the piercing look Theodore gives him. “Stay there,” Theodore orders, and then turns away from the chair. “Misty!”

The little house-elf appears again, her arms folded and her head nodding as if she’s having a private conversation with Theodore. “Yes, Master Theodore?”

“Ensure that Harry doesn’t move from that seat until I’ve written the letter and sent it off with his owl.”

“Yes, Master Theodore.”

Harry stares at Misty as Theodore marches away. “Why is he like this?” he asked. “Is he still that upset that I didn’t tell him about the sun part of the ritual?” He’s sure Misty will know what he’s talking about. Theodore has said that he talked to her often during his first months here when there was no one else to talk to, and he was probably ranting at Harry a lot while he was asleep, too.

Misty’s ears stand straight up on her head. “Master Harry be almost _dying_ in that ritual. Master Theodore not want the one he loves to be dying,” she says. “Did something hit Master Harry on the head during the ritual, too? Master Theodore not be saying.” She walks behind Harry, apparently to get a look at the back of his skull.

Harry sits where he is, which at least obeys the _order_ Theodore gave, staring wide-eyed at the wall. Theodore _loves_ him?

That can’t be right. Harry isn’t normal. He does extremely dangerous things. His brain goes on those research-flights. He doesn’t know how to make the changes that Theodore asks for before he asks for them. He doesn’t know how to be a good friend, or lover, or whatever it is that Theodore really wants from him.

But maybe that’s not what Theodore wants after all. Maybe he thinks that Harry can actually do something, make some change, that would be what he wants, and they can be together without—Harry doesn’t know, stressing Theodore or something.

Harry should ask him directly. It’s probably the best way to get an answer he’ll understand. He starts to stand up.

“Master Harry be _sitting._ ” Misty flicks her fingers at him, and Harry’s arse plops back in the chair hard enough to make him wince. At least Misty doesn’t mention that she thinks he has a wound there and try to check it.

Harry sighs and picks up the broth spoon again. He does hope that he’ll get to talk to Theodore soon, because he thinks that this is important.

*

Theodore comes back with a letter that was already waiting from Longbottom, saying that Granger mastered the Fiendfyre spell and they managed to sneak into Hogwarts and obtain the ring that was in the Headmaster’s office and a diadem they found in a “hidden place.” Theodore seems indignant that Longbottom doesn’t describe the mission or the hidden place in more detail, but Harry shrugs.

“It’s probably the place where he was hosting that Defense group in our fifth year, because Umbridge was useless,” Harry says. “Anyway, I wanted to ask you—”

“What Defense group?”

“Longbottom and his friends were hosting a Defense group to help people pass their OWLS,” Harry says patiently. “I don’t know exactly where because of course they didn’t know I existed to be a member of it, but—”

“They didn’t ask _me._ ”

“I don’t think any Slytherins were a part of it.” Harry just shrugs when Theodore looks even more indignant. “I mean, Theodore, you have to admit that your Housemates hardly had the best reputation at the time.”

“Right,” Theodore says at last, grudgingly. “So. They have two Horcruxes, and Granger’s presumably destroyed them. But what are they going to do about that cup and the snake and the one that’s in Longbottom’s scar? Longbottom can hardly light his face on fire.”

“I don’t know. I reckon they’ll ask for help if they need it.” Harry leans forwards. “I need to ask you something, and it’s not about Longbottom, and it’s important.”

“All right.” Theodore seems to be bracing himself as he sits down on the other side of the table from Harry.

“Misty said something about how you loved me. Is that true? Is there something I can do to make this easier for you?”

Theodore’s mouth falls open. It’s a good thing that he’s already sitting, Harry thinks, or he would probably fall over. “Misty—told you that?” He sounds faint. “Why would she tell you something like that?”

“I asked her why you were so upset during the sun part of my ritual, and she told me.”

Theodore’s fingers clasp the edge of the table hard enough that Harry thinks he’s going to break them for a second, and then he looks at the wall and shakes his head. “What do you mean by ‘make things easier for me?’”

“I don’t know how to be in love with someone,” Harry says. “Or have someone be in love with me. I thought I was sparing you some worry by not telling you about the sun rune, but obviously it doesn’t work that way. So. How can I make this easier? Will you tell me what you want to know? What I can do so you don’t worry so much?”

Theodore continues looking at the wall for a second. Harry hopes that’s because he’s making a list in his head, and not because what Harry has asked is impossible.

Then he turns around, and there’s an uncertain expression on his face. At least, uncertainty is part of it. Harry is proud of his new ability to tell that much. “I—you mean that? You really don’t want to just vanish back under your protective magic?”

Harry grimaces. It feels like he’s standing in the middle of Diagon Alley with the words he has to speak next. But Theodore didn’t even get to speak them, he had them revealed by a house-elf, and that’s really not fair. So Harry will do what he has to.

“There are plenty of times I want to do that,” Harry says quietly. “But on the other hand, what would that gain me? I couldn’t imagine any other sort of life, at one time. Now I can. Here with you and Misty and even Merlin. Around larger crowds, someday.” He meets Theodore’s eyes and doesn’t flinch, and it’s probably the hardest thing he ever did, certainly harder than casting the runic circle to hide the Muggleborns. That was just…research. This is opening up. “Getting my NEWTS. Having a business of my own. Being with you. If that’s something you want.”

Theodore is sitting very still, his eyes bright. Then he nods. “That’s all I want.”

“I mean, you should work on other ambitions, too.” Harry feels a bit of anxiety swirling around the middle of his chest. Is this something he’s going to have to research, too? He doesn’t even know which books he’d start looking in. “I know I’ve read things that say you should never depend too much on just your partner, and—”

Theodore gets up and comes around the table with a bright laugh. He wraps his hands around Harry’s wrists and gently strokes, his thumb running back and forth along the bones. Harry would say something else any other time about how he doesn’t need to do that, what with Misty’s magic holding him in place, but he’s enthralled by Theodore’s eyes.

He looks so _happy._

“I know that,” Theodore says. “But right _now_ , it’s all I want. Just like I want food when I’m hungry and something else when it’s satisfied. Except that I don’t know if I’m ever going to get enough of being with you.” He cups Harry’s cheek and turns his head gently, and then kisses his lips and his forehead. “We’ll find the way forwards together, Harry. I know that everything isn’t perfect yet. But you’re willing to try, and that means the world to me.”

Harry leans against him and accepts the gentle humming of his own heart. Maybe that means he’s in love, too. Maybe it means that something other than research is making him happy. Would he _know,_ exactly? How happy should he be before he has to question it?

More questions for later. For now, there’s a sweetness that Harry hasn’t felt before.

*

Agitated hooting wakes Harry up. He sits up in bed, hating the drag of weakness on his slow muscles, and draws his wand. “ _Lumos._ ”

Merlin is revealed sitting on the foot of his bed, fluttering his wings and hooting over and over again. Once he catches Harry’s eye, he flaps into the air and flies around his head, utterly silent as usual, still hooting.

“What is it?” Harry whispers, but he’s already pulling back the blankets and climbing out of bed. He’s glad now that Theodore judged him too weak for “exercise” tonight and went to sleep in his own room. He wouldn’t want to wake him up and worry him if it’s nothing.

Then again, Merlin doesn’t get excited over “nothing,” except Harry’s imaginary offenses.

Merlin leads him straight to the front door of the cottage. Harry peers out the door and sees a soft shimmer that he hasn’t seen before, but which must be the glow of the protective rune marking the cottage.

Then Harry sees the dark figures moving beyond the boundary. He stiffens, and Merlin gives another flap.

_Shit._

It’s true that the rune protects them from Theodore’s father’s direct interference, and Theodore from being branded with the Dark Mark. But enough people can probably overload and crack the rune, the same way that the Moody imposter confused the Goblet of Fire. And there’s every possibility that they have the Mark themselves, which would fight against the rune’s sense of integrity and weaken it if they step onto the land.

Harry wishes for a moment that they were portraits, which would make it easy to banish them the way he did the portrait in Grimmauld Place. But they’re not, and he still doesn’t want to kill them, so he goes for something easier. He touches the runic circle on his chest, and sees the glow welling up around his fingers.

Theodore will probably get angry at him for the drain on his magic, but on the other hand, with the runic circle gathering up ambient magic, it won’t be as bad as if Harry had to cast this all himself.

“Are you the blood traitor Harry Potter?” one of the Death Eaters shouts.

Harry frowns in their direction. “Why would I be a blood traitor? I’m a half-blood. I thought that term was reserved for the purebloods who abandon your customs by acting like decent people?”

There’s a moment of confusion, but it doesn’t last very long. The Death Eater who shouted steps forwards, hood falling back so that the light from the house shines on his white mask. “It doesn’t matter if he’s Harry Potter or not. His magical signature was traced here.”

Harry frowns harder. _Shit._ He must not have taken enough precautions to conceal the damn thing in the Forbidden Forest. Because he was focused on establishing a new ritual rather than disguising himself, they could have tracked him from the feeling of his magic.

Harry swallows back the instinctive panic that tries to start up in his chest. It doesn’t matter if they tracked him here. Harry still won’t let any harm come to himself, or Theodore, or Misty, or even Merlin (as much as the owl deserves it).

“It matters if he’s Harry Potter,” someone else argues, and then a slight figure pushes its way forwards and takes off the white mask, despite the hisses from the others. This man is short, with hair that hangs askew and a tremulous smile. “You probably don’t remember me, do you, Harry?”

“I don’t make a habit of remembering Death Eaters, no.” A movement behind him, in the direction of the window, tells Harry that Theodore is probably there. He doesn’t turn around, though, because he sees no reason to reveal his allies.

“You don’t remember me from your childhood?” The man tries an absurd little wave, but then coughs and drops his hand. Harry’s not sure if that’s because of him, though, or the other Death Eaters staring at him in disgust. “I visited you several times then. I’m Peter Pettigrew.”

“Oh, the traitor!”

Pettigrew stiffens. “That’s not very nice, Harry. Your magical signature is all over the Forbidden Forest, and the Dark Lord wants you brought to him. I know that you did something powerful on the Hogwarts grounds, but if I speak up for you, I might be able to convince him to spare you.”

“You probably can’t, and I don’t care about an endorsement from someone with the Dark Mark on his arm.” Harry gathers up the magic that’s been growing in the circle on his chest while Pettigrew splutters. “But I do have something to say to the Dark Lord.”

“Yeah?” demands the one who called him a blood traitor. “What’s that?”

“Tell him to get better protections for his servants. Yours are pitiful.”

They’re still leveling their wands at him when Harry’s magic travels outwards and flows over the rune boundary in a breath of intent. When it clears from the air as a sort of puff of magical silvery dust, all the Death Eaters are motionless on the ground.

“You said you were against killing, but you killed them?” Theodore’s voice is casual, but his hand tightens on Harry’s elbow.

Harry tilts his head. “Listen to them and tell me that they’re dead.”

Theodore finally listens and seems to notice the impressive snores. He sighs and relaxes back against the wall, but doesn’t let go of Harry’s elbow. “We need to move. They’re going to keep returning to the house now that we know where we are.”

Harry frowns at him. “Why would we do that? It’s two days from a new moon, and now I know how to construct a giant runic circle like the one that I used to hide the Muggleborns.”

Theodore blinks at him. Harry blinks back. He’s wondering if that’s going to go on all night when Theodore sighs and says, “Explain the significance of the new moon.”

“ _Two days_ from a new moon,” Harry corrects. “The two days is important. When you put the number two in an Arithmantic equation paired with a six-rune circle, and inscribe it with fire and salt in the middle of a block of granite—”

“Please assume that your audience is not a genius and explain it in appropriate terms.”

“It’s easier to hide a house with two people in it than it is to hide a whole nation of Muggleborns, especially when the moon’s about to disappear,” Harry says. “And if you can help me draw the runes in salt and fire, they won’t rely on celestial power the way the last circle did.”

“There, see how simple that was?” Theodore tells him, and then goes outside to take the Death Eaters’ wands. Harry hopes that he’ll burn them. It won’t make these particular Death Eaters any smarter, but it should keep them from being as dangerous for a while. And if Theodore wants to cast the Memory Charm on them so that they’ll be even _more_ non-dangerous…

Harry is all for that. He’s not a particularly merciful person, just not interested in murder.

*

Theodore shudders as he finishes the last rune, and the parchment that Harry wrote the Arithmantic equation on catches fire. Harry grins at him from the other side of the Transfigured granite slab. The Transfiguration will make it slightly less powerful, but two people two days from the eve of the moon’s disappearance make up for any weakness like that in the spell.

“You feel the power, don’t you?” Harry shakes his head and lets his own wand trace an _uruz_ rune in the air in front of him. It glows and sparkles, catching fire like the runes that Theodore drew on the stone. “It’s a shame that Runes requires so much research and such dedicated knowledge. More wizards would use them instead of wands if they knew about their strength.”

“I would think that you would be happy about that,” Theodore mutters, as he steps to the outer ring of the circle, sketched out in salt.

Harry frowns at him as he checks the position of the moon and then joins Theodore on the other side of the granite slab, the other side of the circle. The slab is lying on the grass in front of the cottage, near the place where the Death Eaters stood last night. The circle is singing in the back of Harry’s mind, murmuring soft sounds that don’t quite reach the status of words. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that you would prefer to be the only standout. You don’t want other wizards to have access to Runes because you like being the only one who really knows what they’re like.”

Harry stares at Theodore, his mouth open slightly in outrage. Then he shakes his head. “You really don’t understand me at all if you think that.”

“Then tell me what you mean.”

“What I said. It’s a shame that wizards don’t know more about the power of Runes and that it requires a lot of research.”

Theodore pauses for a second, swaying slightly in place, but Harry knows that’s the power of the ritual they’ve raised together coursing through him. Then he laughs abruptly. “I should have realized that. You’re not the sort to say what you don’t mean. Sorry, Harry. I grew up dealing with my father, and, well.”

Harry nods. “I think only weak people lie,” he offers, since Theodore is still looking at him as if he’s a wonder, and Harry wishes he would stop. “I don’t really need to.”

Theodore snorts and looks down at his feet. The circle is swelling slowly outwards to encompass them and the house now, and the fire in the air snaps and swirls around him as it traces the configurations of the runes Harry chose to make the circle over and over again. “Most people don’t have your luxury of being protected until they’re powerful enough to stand on their own and tell the truth all the time.”

“I know that. But I hope I protected you well enough for you to have that.”

Theodore peers at him with wide eyes, but says nothing for the rest of the ritual. Only when the circle has swarmed past the house and faded into the distance with a blast of salt and fire, keeping them secret better than any Fidelius Charm ever could, does he come over and put his hand on Harry’s. Harry looks up from Transfiguring the slab of granite back.

“I hope—I hope you realize that you’re a wonder to me no matter what.”

Harry swallows. “I know.”

“Then why do you look so uncomfortable with me saying it?”

“Why do you need to say it? Why can’t we just—know it?”

“Now that we _both_ know we know it,” Theodore says softly, leaning his forehead against Harry’s, “sure.”

*

“Fucking Death Eaters.”

“I thought the runic circle was supposed to protect us from them?”

Harry reaches out to touch Theodore’s shoulder. He hates seeing him so tense. He thinks he probably always has since he saw Theodore searching for a means to escape the Dark Mark in the Hogwarts library. “It does. It doesn’t let them see the house or launch an attack across the boundary. But they have the memory of the surroundings, and so they’re back. And we didn’t think to include a shield against scent.” He nods to the giant snake who is slowly moving along the border of grass the circle protects, her tongue flickering out.

“Can she cross it?”

“I’m not sure,” Harry murmured. “We protected against That Bastard’s magic, but she’s a living being as well as a Horcrux. Maybe.” He glances sidelong at Theodore. “If she does, can you cast the Fiendfyre spell? I have the power to do it, but I haven’t done it, and the last thing we need is for it to go out of control.”

“Agreed.” Theodore watches the snake as she comes to the border of the circle, hesitates, and then crosses. “Shit.” He swallows. “I’m going to open a window and launch the curse from there. I don’t—have time for a containment ward. And I don’t want her inside the house.”

“Agreed,” Harry repeats back to him. The snake isn’t any kind he knows well enough to identify, but she’s huge, with mottled green scales that have dapples like shadows racing up and down them. She slides through the grass with the softest noise. He doesn’t want to face her in close quarters.

Theodore pops open the window and sticks his wand out. But the snake is slithering closer to the house so fast that he has to keep moving his wand, and Harry can see how his hand is shaking. “Shit,” he whispers again.

Harry starts to lean over and put a hand on his shoulder, but abruptly, a fluttering shape descends from the sky, and then Merlin is swooping around the snake’s head, his talons extended and his shrill cries completely covering the sound she makes as she rises and lunges at him.

“What’s he doing?” Theodore breathes.

“Keeping her in one place so it’s easier to hit her.” Harry steadies Theodore’s hand. “Come on. I can help you move it in the gesture, if nothing else. Come on, give your power to it.” He leans closer to Theodore’s ear. “ _Fiendfyre._ ”

Theodore nods, his eyes blown wide, and then speaks the incantation with the same conviction, at least as far as Harry can hear, that he used when he destroyed the diary and the locket. The fire springs into the air and assumes the shape of several writhing serpents, a hydra rearing nearly as high as the house. Theodore moves his wrist sharply, and the serpents dive down, under his control again.

Merlin flutters around the snake’s head until the last moment, and then flees like a runic circle dissipating. The snake lunges one more time and runs straight into the hydra the Fiendfyre has become. It eats her alive, and Harry hears the same distant shriek that he did when the diary died. He smiles. He doesn’t think that was the snake. They don’t have voices, as far as he knows, unless you’re a Parselmouth.

Then he leans hard on Theodore as the Fiendfyre begins to turn back towards the house. They don’t need to be worried about the Death Eaters, who are shivering in terror. Harry whispers, “ _Finite Incantatem._ ”

Theodore says the same thing, hand no longer trembling, and the hydra fades to a spark in the air just as it’s about to bite the roof. Theodore drops straight down to the floor, his knees tucked up in front of him and his head bent between them. He’s shivering, his skin all covered with cold sweat when Harry touches him.

“Rest,” Harry tells him, feeling tender and proud and frightened. He wonders if this was the way Theodore felt after watching Harry cast the Muggleborn runic circle, before he steps out the door and walks towards the Death Eaters. They’re chattering amongst themselves, but they fall silent as he comes nearer. They shouldn’t be able to see him, but with the way they’re squinting, they can probably hear his footsteps.

“Your Lord’s snake is dead,” Harry tells them, since he’s not sure they saw that, either, past the boundaries of the circle. He ignores another clamor rises up. “I would go back to him and report if I were you.”

“You’ll pay for this,” snarls a witch with a husky voice and long blonde hair, her eyes focused slightly to the right of where Harry’s actually standing.

“It’s your Lord who’s already paid, again and again,” Harry says, shaking his head. “Why do you follow him? He’s stupid _and_ unlucky.”

“How dare you!” The witch draws her wand, but one of the other wizards reaches out and clasps her wrist. Then he speaks. He’s wearing a mask, but Harry recognizes that whiny, nasally voice. It’s Pettigrew again.

“Harry, come on. What stake do you have in this war? You don’t remember your parents or your godfather, I know you don’t. And you barely associated with anyone at school. Why do you want to defend Muggleborns? Why do you want to defend Nott? Someone of your obvious talent could be useful to the Dark Lord. Come with me, and I’ll make sure that you have an honored part in his ranks.”

Harry stares at him, while a few moments pass and it seems that the other Death Eaters really are going to wait for the outcome of his agreement or disagreement. Then he shakes his head and says, “Wow, you’re a traitor coming _and_ going, aren’t you, Pettigrew?”

The man flinches, which is pretty typical of him, from what Harry’s seen. Harry shakes his head again. “I doubt your Lord would have liked to hear you make that kind of offer to someone who just killed his snake.”

“No, no, I had his full authorization! I assure you, Harry! If the attack failed—”

The blonde witch kicks Pettigrew to get him to shut up, but Harry’s brain has already leaped to a few obvious conclusions, and he can’t help laughing. “So, what? He wanted to kill me, but he also wanted to make me the offer? And why? Because he’s _afraid_ of me.”

“How dare you!” yells someone else, which just proves that Death Eaters aren’t recruited for their vocabulary skills.

“He’s afraid of me,” Harry says, pursuing the thought, “because why _wouldn’t_ you be afraid of someone who can cast a full circle that hides thousands of people from your regime?” He grins at Pettigrew. “And That Bastard has no idea how I did it, either.”

“You should call him the Dark Lord,” Pettigrew says in a weak voice. Harry thinks he singled out that part because he has no idea how to respond to the rest of it.

“Just because he might have put a Taboo on his name doesn’t mean I need to be respectful.” Harry stretches, and gathers up some magic from the runic circle on his chest so that he can deflect any curses they hurl at him. The circle on his left side starts to glow, too, although more weakly than Harry saw it doing when the circle on his right side was intact. He really does need to replace that one. “You should leave now, before I hurt you.”

The blonde witch hurls the Killing Curse at him. Harry starts to move his wand, and then realizes he didn’t need to. The boundary of the circle deflects the blast of green light back and off to the side, making several people duck.

Harry lets out a breath of relief he doesn’t permit them to hear. Good. He doesn’t really want to be responsible for someone dying, even indirectly.

“You will pay for this,” the blonde witch says, and probably thinks she sounds intimidating, instead of just like she smokes pipes every day.

Harry smiles, raises an eyebrow, and then turns and walks back towards the cottage as they begin Apparating away. He knows that Pettigrew and the rest who had their wands destroyed are having to be Side-Along Apparated, which is pretty satisfying.

Theodore is watching him through the cottage door, and reaches out to draw him in. Harry comes, gently running his hand down Theodore’s side.

“Are you all right? Do you need a Pepper-Up?”

“Your side is bleeding again, you idiot,” Theodore mutters, which serves as a sort of answer to the question, Harry supposes, although he would have liked a better one. “Was it wise to taunt them like that? They’ll concentrate more of their efforts on finding this cottage now. The Dark Lord might even show up here. And we can’t kill him with Horcruxes still in play.”

“Then we’ll force him into wraith form.”

Theodore stares at him. “You think we can _do_ that? Why?”

“Because I know how the backlash of the Killing Curse on the night he attacked Longbottom must have worked, given that he was forced into wraith form and Longbottom is a Horcrux,” Harry says, a little impatient. Does Theodore think he would really put them in danger without a reason, or offer to do something he couldn’t do? “We can replicate the circumstances with a fairly simple runic circle, and charge it with the power of contigency.”

“Simple.” Theodore puts his hand over his face.

“Are you feverish? Do you want to sit down?” Harry leads him further into the house, frowning. He wants to go out and check the boundary of the circle to make sure that the snake’s death didn’t rupture it in any way, or that attempt with the Killing Curse, but he doesn’t want to leave Theodore alone. “Do you think—”

“ _Simple_ ,” Theodore says, and then begins to howl with laughter.

Harry shakes his head and calls for Misty to bring a Calming Draught.

*

_We have the second-to-last Horcrux._

Harry grins at Longbottom’s letter. That’s all it says, it doesn’t say how they got the cup out of what was presumably a Gringotts vault, but neither does it really matter. Granger can destroy it, and then they just need to figure out a way to get the one in Longbottom out of his head.

Harry writes a letter back telling him that they killed the snake, and watches the barn owl fly off into the distance. Merlin wanted to take it, but he’s a little worn from the flight that he took to bring back Longbottom’s letter already. Harry isn’t sure how far away that is. Longbottom probably wouldn’t be stupid enough to remain in his ancestral home where anyone could track him, but maybe he has a place like it under the Fideilius.

He makes it to breakfast and sees Theodore on his feet. Harry draws his wand before he can think, but Theodore glances at him, shakes his head, and abruptly sits down again. “It’s nothing dangerous. It’s just that idiot Longbottom and his friends.”

“What did they do now?” Harry puts his wand away and sits down himself, a little relieved. He’s hungry. He would be sleepy too, since he wanted to stay up last night and perfect the ritual that will force That Bastard into wraith form if he attacks, but Theodore had persuasive lips and hands that wore him out.

“Broke into Gringotts and rode out on the back of a dragon.”

Harry starts laughing, and that goes poorly with the porridge that’s in his throat at the moment. Misty appears, stares at him, and then casts some sort of spell which claps him on the back. Something unidentifiable flies out of his mouth and lands in the middle of the table.

Theodore stares at it pointedly.

“Sorry,” Harry mutters, and Vanishes it. “But seriously, that was their great method to get the Horcrux?”

“The paper didn’t say whether they stole anything. The reporters probably don’t know, and it’s not like the goblins would admit it.” Theodore slaps the paper down in front of Harry. “They got a great photograph somehow, though.”

Harry grins at the image of a dragon winging across the sky with three people clutching desperately at its back. There’s a long mane of frizzy hair that’s recognizably Granger, and red hair that must be Weasley’s, but the photographer—probably with magic—got the clearest image of Longbottom, sitting pale and determined in the front, his lightning bolt scar on display. And yeah, there’s a flash of gold in his hand that is only really visible if you’re looking specifically for that.

“Well, let’s hope they don’t have to bank at Gringotts any time soon,” Harry says cheerfully, and faces Theodore. “Are we going to do the ritual and have it ready in case That Bastard comes? I wonder if it’s for the best now that we know Longbottom has the cup. Maybe we should wait for them to destroy the last two and then whoever goes up against That Bastard can kill him outright.”

“I don’t want to wait and see if the Dark Lord can pierce our protections.” Theodore’s face is so pale when Harry glances at him again that Harry starts to stand up, but Theodore points sternly at his bowl, and Harry sits down again. “And even if they do destroy both the Horcruxes—which, I mean, there’s no indication they know what to do about the one in Longbottom yet—someone would still have to track the Dark Lord down and _face_ him. He won’t come calling easily.”

“Except on us.”

“Right.” Theodore shivers for a second, then adds softly, “And from what I know about Horcruxes, what I read about them, once they’re all gone, then his hold on the world should be gone, and the wraith will fade away. He’ll have nothing to anchor his soul anymore, and the only reason he must have survived his disembodiment the first time was that.”

“Good points.” Harry knows better than to stand up and go prepare the ritual right now, but his skin tingles with anticipation. “We’ll get it ready today, then.”

“If you eat your breakfast.”

“Yes, Mother.”

“I’ll have you know that your mother wouldn’t do to you what I did last night.”

Harry finds himself blushing, but also rejoicing in the smile that seems to have taken over Theodore’s face.

*

“So we’re going to use runes, but not a runic circle?” Theodore is frowning down at the stone floor of his potions lab, where Harry is sketching out the shape of the ritual with salt like they did with the runic circle to protect the house. “That shape looks like a pentagram, and you’ve only drawn one rune.”

Harry nods and stands up. “The rune is the most important part of the ritual, the part on which the whole thing turns, but circles are for protection. This is for aggression.” He glances at the pentagram and smiles a little as he watches the sullen blue fire springing up at its points. The magic answering him has its own temperament, the way the magic he used in the runic circle to hide the Muggleborns was awe-inspiring. This particular kind won’t obey him easily until he shows that he can master it. “And we have to replicate the circumstances of the night that That Bastard attacked Longbottom.”

“If I didn’t know that you hate killing people, I’d think you were saying infant sacrifice.”

Harry shakes his head. “If That Bastard wanted to make a Horcrux, then that’s what _he_ would have intended. But it’s not what happened. There _was_ a sacrifice, but it was an adult. Alice Longbottom, the mother who died defending Neville.”

“You are not going to make yourself the sacrifice.”

There’s an edge to Theodore’s voice, but he’s also not just assuming that that’s what Harry intends, which Harry appreciates. He nods anyway. “No. I’m going to make That Bastard’s current body the sacrifice.”

“ _How_?”

“The ritual will create a space that’s like a laid fire, just waiting to be ignited. If That Bastard doesn’t strike at us, then it won’t light. But you know he will. And then the kindling will want to go on burning. It’ll take his body.”

“But not us?”

“No.” Harry smiles and faces the pentagram. “Not you, because you’re standing on that point and you integrated your blood into it, so the ritual will read you as _part_ of the pentagram, one of its components. And not me, because…”

His will rushes forwards, and the rune in the center of the pentagram rises with a roar. Harry holds out his hands and bathes them in the fire, ignoring the part where the flames are trying to chew his flesh off.

“You _promised_ you would try to stay safe—”

Harry twists, and his foot comes down on the small constellation inscribed in the nearest point of the pentagram. Leo, the constellation that stood guard over his own birth. It flares with its own fire, bright and silver, and the point where Theodore stands does the same.

The blue flames find themselves retreating, and reach out to the two uninvolved points of the pentagram. Harry smiles. There are traps waiting there, fires to be ignited that aren’t meant for Voldemort, but it would be counterproductive to call the rebellious power’s attention to them.

With a shimmer, two other runes come into being, ones that were potential only, like the ones called by the runic circles on Harry’s body before he casts a spell. They rise, _Sowilo_ and _Algiz_ , and surround the flames, corralling them and herding them back towards the center of the pentagram. Harry stomps his foot and hurls his will again, and even the flames ringing his hands crawl off them and to the floor. They bow to him, inclining what look briefly like spiky, crowned heads.

And then the pentagram settles, still and waiting, for the moment when Voldemort or someone else sets foot in the trap.

Harry steps back, sweating, and swiping his hand across his forehead. He smiles at Theodore.

“How did you know that you were going to win?” Theodore asks, sounding subdued.

“Oh, shit,” Harry says, and he can feel the smile sliding off his face. “Did I not explain that?”

“You did not.” Theodore’s voice has gone smooth again.

Harry sighs. “Sorry. The whole pentagram is based on potential—what’s going to happen _if_ That Bastard does certain things. So I did inscribe other runes, runes of healing and protection that would only manifest if the central rune challenged me the way I expected it to. I was confident I could win because I knew I had others on my side. Other runes. I’m sorry, Theodore. I—I just forget.”

Theodore nods slowly. “I assume that you’re less likely to get into life-threatening situations once we no longer have a bloody _war_ on our hands.”

“Right,” Harry says, and he’s so relieved for the acceptance that he strides across the still pentagram to kiss Theodore, and then drag him towards his bedroom so that they can start doing many other things more pleasurable than facing down a hungry, angry power-fire.

*

“There he is.”

Theodore doesn’t respond. Harry glances back at him and sees him shuddering, his hands rising to cover his face. Then he lowers the right hand and gropes at his left forearm, fingers sliding over it.

“It’s all right,” Harry says, softly. “You’re safe. You’re behind the pentagram, the runic circle surrounding the cottage, and the rune I found for you.” He reaches out and closes his own hand on Theodore’s left forearm, the place where he would have been Marked if his father had driven him to it, and Theodore starts and turns his head to focus on Harry. “It’s all right, Theodore. I promise.”

Theodore still looks ill, but he manages a tremulous smile. Harry smiles back and walks out the front door of the cottage.

He can already feel the pentagram in the potions lab charging itself, spreading out around him. The image made of salt was only a representation of it, the way a map is of the land. Once Harry conquered the magic that made it up, he became capable of doing anything with it, and now it’s waiting around him, trembling with eagerness, like a hound on the leash.

 _If_ Voldemort decides to try and kill Harry with his favorite method of killing people. But Harry is virtually certain that he will.

Voldemort pauses when he sees Harry come to a stop on the other side of the runic circle. He looks like a pillar of salt has come to life and someone’s carved a partial snake face on it. “You are not Longbottom.”

“How stupid are you that you thought I was?” Harry asks in confusion. “Or do you just not listen to the reports that any of your Death Eaters give you?”

He thinks it’s a reasonable question, but Voldemort’s pale wand comes rippling into his hand, and he hisses something in Parseltongue Harry doesn’t, of course, understand. It would probably scare lots of people. Harry isn’t lots of people. He stares at Voldemort and waits for an answer to the question.

It never comes. Voldemort returns to English and says, “Those who defy me, die. And from what my followers tracking your magical signature have said, with you dies the protection that guards the Mudbloods.”

“Only stupid people say that word, but thanks for the extra confirmation, I reckon.”

He’s done it, Harry sees in an instant, sent Voldemort so far over the edge that he’s going to use his favorite curse. His wand whips through the air, and he snarls, “ _Avada Kedavra_!”

Had Harry just wanted to resist the curse, it would have been enough to stay behind the runic circle as he did the other night when the blonde Death Eater cast it. But Harry folds his arms and bows his head, and the blue flames hiss up around him as the contingent magic goes to work.

_If this, then this…_

The Killing Curse streaking through the air, as it did towards Longbottom all those years ago.

_If that, then that…_

Someone standing in front of Voldemort without running and without moving, the way that Alice Longbottom did. That person filled with the protective impulse for someone else, as Harry focuses his mind on Theodore and how he doesn’t want Theodore to suffer.

_If this, then that…_

The notion of a sacrifice, of a body waiting to be felled by the Killing Curse, although here it’s Voldemort’s temporary one and not that of an adult who expects to die.

_If that, then this…_

With so many of Voldemort’s Horcruxes destroyed, his hold on life is far more fragile than it was when he confronted the Longbottoms. And the Killing Curse seeks a victim; it doesn’t care who that victim _is._ It doesn’t need to be deflected or resisted, the seemingly impossible thing that happened with Voldemort, if the _likelihood_ in the moment is that it will strike someone who is a construct in any case, only barely alive, rather than someone who is shielded by protective runes and might be _expected_ to be safer from any spell.

 _If this, then this and that and_ that.

The Killing Curse turns in midair, curving like a line of sunlight refracted by a mirror, and slams into Voldemort.

There’s a long shriek, a horrendous tearing noise that Harry hopes isn’t reality fracturing the way it sounds like, and then a dense silence. Harry opens his eyes.

Voldemort’s construct-body lies motionless on the ground, the light fled from its eyes.

And something else, Harry tracks the helpless flight of the wraith through the darkness, smiling as he notices how tattered it is. They’ll have to do some seeking rituals like the one he performed with the diary to be sure, but he’s pretty sure that the wraith is so weak it won’t be able to possess people, and will fade from the world with the destruction of the last two Horcruxes.

There are sharp pops as the Death Eaters who followed Voldemort—who Harry honestly paid no attention to—Apparate away. Harry can hear cut-off gasps, and he wonders whether others who weren’t here, but have Dark Marks, will feel that their Lord has died again.

He turns around, and Theodore slams into him from behind, arms wrapping around him. Harry laughs and gathers him in. He’s a little startled at the enthusiasm, but, well, it makes sense, given that Theodore really didn’t believe this could work.

But he followed Harry anyway, took the risk. That humbles Harry to the point that he’s amazed at Theodore’s loyalty.

He starts to ask if Theodore saw the wraith leave and if Harry was right about it being tattered, but Theodore kisses him hard enough to scramble Harry’s thoughts and focus them entirely on the bedroom, for once. Then Theodore pulls back and whispers, “What would you say about having a different kind of sex tonight?”

Harry’s breath quickens. Sex is brilliant, he can’t deny that, although he thinks it’s brilliant partially because it’s with _Theodore_ and not just sex. “What did you have in mind?”

*

“And it’s really not going to hurt you?”

Theodore rolls his eyes from where he’s stroking his fingers in and out of his own arse. Harry can’t take his eyes away, but he also can’t stop thinking about how it’s someone’s _arse_ , and things aren’t really supposed to go up it.

“Says the man who thought bursting his right side open and exposing his ribs to the air was a fine action.” Theodore touches something then that makes him gasp and roll onto his back. “Besides, in a little while I’m going to do this to _you_ , and then you’ll be able to see how it feels for yourself.”

“Bursting my right side open was necessary,” Harry complains. He can’t take his eyes away from Theodore, though, and he’s rapidly losing track of the conversation. Theodore withdraws his hand at last and spreads his legs again, and Harry swallows. “I—if you’re sure.” He _wants_ to, with a longing that spreads through him like the fire from the pentagram, but he doesn’t want to hurt Theodore, either.

“Yes. Come on, Harry.”

Theodore’s eyes are burning at him, and Harry can’t resist, after all. He gets on the bed and kneels between Theodore’s spread legs, taking the vial of lubricant from Theodore to spread it over himself. Now Theodore is the one who’s watching _Harry’s_ hands move, his eyes wide and dark.

Harry puts the lubricant vial aside, and slowly slides into Theodore. His own eyes are probably fluttering and closing the way Theodore’s were a minute ago, he thinks vaguely. The _squeeze_ is like nothing he ever imagined, and so is the heat. He ends up fully seated, but with his forehead leaning on Theodore’s forehead, his breath rushing in and out of his lungs.

Theodore touches him on the hipbone. Harry looks up, and feels two things: _seen_ by the way Theodore’s eyes focus on him as if he’s the center of the world.

And _all right_ with being seen.

“Move,” Theodore says.

It’s a hasty, clumsy thing, this first time of a new kind of sex than using hands or mouths or thighs, Harry shifting in and out and Theodore groaning and sometimes telling him to stop or shift the direction, and sweat slipping between them until Harry feels like one of them is going to slide right off the bed. But it’s also the most thrilling pleasure Harry’s ever felt, like lightning connecting them, and when he finally comes, he can see the same radiance reflected in Theodore’s face.

And maybe it’s just the relaxation that stems from having come himself, but it really doesn’t hurt that much when he pulls out and Theodore flips him over and gets him ready, with minimal help from Harry himself. Harry just wants to lie around and grin at the ceiling. Theodore is the one who prepares him, then, and that’s all right. Harry smiles up at him, and Theodore’s breath catches.

“What?” Harry asks.

“I can’t believe you’re mine.” Theodore’s hands are shaking a little as he slides his fingers into Harry’s arse.

Harry laughs. “I love you, too.”

“Do you—do you mean that?”

“Do I go around saying things I don’t mean?” Harry stretches and lets his legs fall open so that Theodore can reach his entrance more easily. “I thought you were always scolding me for keeping things to myself, instead. Although I still maintain that you would have had hysterics if I told you about the sun thing.”

Theodore mutters something that Harry doesn’t need to listen to, and then enters his body. Harry arches his back and purrs encouragement. Honestly, this is pretty great, too, having someone inside him who thrusts into him and withdraws, and sometimes nudges what must be the thing Theodore touched and sends flashes of heat through him. It’s so good Harry is half-hard again by the time Theodore comes.

After that, Theodore curls up around him, holding him as if he were the precious one. Harry holds him back, and falls asleep thinking that those tales he read where the conquering hero has great sex are more realistic than he thought.

*

Harry of course sends a letter to Longbottom about destroying Voldemort’s body. What he didn’t expect was for Longbottom to ask to come in person instead of sending a letter. Harry discusses it with Theodore.

Theodore smiles at him. He’s done that a lot more often ever since the evening when they confronted Voldemort. Harry thinks that it’s not so much the fact that Voldemort died—he might still be able to come back, even if Harry doesn’t think so—as that Theodore saw him _flee_. What happened once can happen again.

“Of course. Give him the Apparition coordinates I gave you for the first time you came here. I don’t really fear treachery from Longbottom.”

And Theodore gets up and walks away, stretching and saying something about Arithmancy under his breath. Harry watches him with his heart swelling in wonder. He thinks he knows why Theodore caught his breath last night at the sight of Harry’s smile.

Meeting Longbottom is only mildly uncomfortable. He promised to come by himself without Weasley and Granger, and he keeps his word. Harry blinks a little to see that he seems to have grown taller, and that his face is paler. But the thing that stands out the most to Harry is the pale nature of his scar when he gets closer.

“You destroyed the last two Horcruxes, didn’t you?”

Longbottom stares at him, then snorts. “You’re a bloody genius, so I shouldn’t be surprised that you know that. But how?”

“Your scar doesn’t look red the way it usually does. And since that was the visible symbol of your connection with That Bastard…”

Longbottom laughs aloud, shaking his hair back from the scar. “That’s a good way to refer to him. But yeah, we managed.” Longbottom abruptly pales and looks off to the side. “I’d rather not talk about it, if you don’t mind.”

“It’s all right,” Harry says softly. “I can just imagine. Did you just want to meet to discuss the destruction of the Horcruxes?”

“No.” Longbottom’s eyes fasten on him. “I have something to give you. I can’t believe Professor Dumbledore never thought of it, but on the other hand, I think the spell he cast on you must have muted the memories of all the objects associated with you in his mind, too.”

“ _He_ cast on me?”

Longbottom grimaces. “You didn’t know, huh? Sorry about that. He mentioned to me during one lesson that he had cast a protective charm on someone who might have been in danger because of the prophecy. But he had the uneasy feeling that the charm had gone wrong, somehow. He couldn’t remember any more about it than that, and of course I forgot about the conversation.” Longbottom pauses. “Until your magic broke.”

“With my seventeenth birthday,” Harry mutters. He shakes his head. Well, he supposes he can’t really blame Dumbledore. He at least cared once, enough to give Harry an existence he loved at the time. And he was as affected by the magic as anyone else.

“What was it you wanted to give me?” he adds, because he can’t imagine that that conversation he must have missed between Dumbledore and Longbottom contained anything all that vital to him.

Longbottom reaches into his robe pocket and appears to bring out his own hand, severed bloodlessly at the wrist. Harry blinks and stares, and then Longbottom shakes the thing out and his hand appears. He’s holding a shimmering silvery piece of twisting air, made into cloth and starlight and delicate water, it seems.

“It’s an Invisibility Cloak that used to belong to the Potter family,” Longbottom says. “I never really got the story out of the Headmaster how he came by it. But he did mention the connection to the Potters, and that it was supposed to go to—someone.” He gives Harry a quick smile and hands the Cloak over. Harry can feel the magic radiating from it the minute it touches his hands.

He turns it over, and watches his own hands disappear for a minute before he glances up at Longbottom again. Longbottom’s face is full of a sympathy that’s almost painful.

“I know it must be hard to suddenly emerge from under magic that guarded you like that,” Longbottom says softly. “It won’t be the same, but now you can disappear whenever you want.”

Something in Harry that has been shrieking in discomfort ever since the loss of the protective magic suddenly shuts up. He sighs and drapes the Cloak over one shoulder, not caring if it makes him look a little odd to Longbottom. “Thank you. You don’t know how much.”

Longbottom smiles at him. “Maybe I do. There were plenty of times I wished I could disappear and make people stop staring at me.” He shakes his head. “One thing you ought to know is that many of the Death Eaters are starting to surrender or flee Britain. The news of V-Voldemort’s destruction went around them like wildfire. And I’m going to tell the Ministry that I’m not the one who did it.”

Harry stares at him. “No.”

“Yes,” Longbottom counters. His mouth twitches a little. “And people who didn’t wish Muggleborns harm have figured out some of what you did with that runic circle, although they can’t break it and don’t want to. I know it’ll endure until you decide that it’s time to let it go. But the people who know it exists have been asking me if I was the one who did it—”

“Are you interested in Runes, too?”

“Not that much. They just got used to attributing everything to me because I’m the Boy-Who-Lived.” Longbottom rolls his shoulders. “But I’m telling the truth about that, too.”

“But _why_?” Harry knows he sounds perilously close to whinging, but he doesn’t care. It’s not like Theodore is here to scold him for it. “Longbottom, you’re used to bearing up with the fame. Can’t you just—keep on?”

“Not when they’re asking me for the theory behind the circle and I’m not going to lie. Not when I think some other people ought to get the fame when it’s due.” Longbottom stands very straight. “And not when I’ve already had two people from the Department of Mysteries contact me offering me an apprenticeship based on the use of Runes that they know that circle had to have displayed.”

“The—Department of Mysteries?”

Longbottom nods emphatically. “I told them both who it really was, and they’ll probably send you messages soon. Not owls. They communicate by—” His tongue abruptly, and visibly, sticks to the roof of his mouth, and he scowls and waves his hand up and down in front of his lips. Then he sighs as his tongue comes unstuck. “Sorry, they literally make that part unspeakable, too, apparently. Gits.”

“But they wouldn’t want to apprentice me because of my knowledge of Runes. They probably approached you because you’re a celebrity.”

Longbottom shakes his head. “No. The Department of Mysteries doesn’t care about that sort of bollocks. Besides, they kind of hate me for what happened there at the end of fifth year. They’d never have reached out to me at all when they thought I did it if they weren’t _really_ impressed. They were relieved to find out it wasn’t me, to tell you the truth.”

Harry blinks, and blinks again. The Department of _Mysteries._ He never considered that, mostly because he has no idea of the entrance requirements. But to be quiet, to work in the deep silent rooms under the Ministry that are rumored to exist, to just be able to smile and shake his head with a _completely legitimate excuse_ when people want to ask too many personal questions about himself—

It sounds like it would suit him exactly.

He’s even thinking about talking with strangers in conversations where he might have to talk about himself _personally._ He is feeling a lot more comfortable.

“What about Hogwarts?” he asks.

“Snape’s stepped down as Headmaster, of course.” Longbottom abruptly swings away from Harry to stare at the horizon. Harry wonders why, but Longbottom doesn’t let him wonder for long. “It was a ruse, all of it,” he says tightly. “Snape only killed Dumbledore on Dumbledore’s _orders._ He was dying anyway from that ring Horcrux. Snape was supposed to gain a position of trust in the Death Eaters. Of course, that’s not necessary now.”

Harry sighs. “So he won’t be prosecuted or go to Azkaban.”

“No.”

“Pity.”

Longbottom grins abruptly at him over his shoulder. “So you didn’t like him even though he didn’t really notice you?”

Harry shakes his head. “He always scowled at me the first five minutes or so of a class. From something Mr. Lupin said to me, he probably hated my father. But he had no reason to behave like an arsehole to me because of it.” He stares at Longbottom. “And he had no reason to behave like an arsehole when he taught you Occlumency, either.”

Longbottom clears his throat, but a faint blush that looks almost pleased touches his cheeks. “He didn’t like that I kept blowing up my cauldron in Potions. He said that someone who was that weak in the basics of his art didn’t stand a chance of defeating V-Voldemort.”

“Then he _is_ an arsehole, no matter what side he’s on,” Harry decides. He’s kind of glad to know that. At least he won’t have to deal with apologies or something from Snape.

“But he was right, wasn’t he?”

Harry frowns. “What do you mean?”

“I didn’t end up defeating him. You did.”

“You had to bear all that fame for years,” Harry says firmly. “Your lot destroyed four of the Horcruxes. We destroyed three and Voldemort’s body. We can either say that you come out ahead on the suffering scale, or we can say we’re even.”

Longbottom smiles brightly. “I’d like it if we could be friends, Harry.” He holds out his hand.

Harry clasps it and shakes it firmly. “See you at Hogwarts next year? Or maybe even this next term?”

“They don’t know when they’re going to open yet, since it’ll take a lot of chasing to round up the Death Eaters still, and probably to convince the Muggleborn kids to come back. But yeah, see you there.”

*

“You can do this.”

Harry frowns and doesn’t answer. He wouldn’t be in Diagon Alley at all if not for Theodore’s urging, and the Invisibility Cloak in his pocket. Theodore has promised that he can duck out of sight any time he gets overwhelmed.

It’s still skin-tightening to Apparate to the edge of the Alley and walk down the center, even with Theodore’s hand pressed against the middle of his back. Luckily, few people look at them, and the few who do seem to be focusing on Theodore, who they probably think is a Death Eater, instead of Harry.

Theodore’s father apparently killed himself a few days ago. Theodore hasn’t said much about it, but they’ve shared a bedroom for the last week, and Harry can hold him when he needs to curl up tightly.

“They ought to be looking at _you_ ,” Theodore says in a disgruntled tone, but at least under his breath. “With all your discoveries in Runes, and that apprenticeship you’re going to take up—”

“You know we can’t even talk about that without our tongues sticking to the roofs of our mouths,” Harry reminds him. That’s just fine with him.

Theodore looks about to comment, but then someone darts towards Harry. Harry charges the runic circle on his chest without thinking about it, but Ollivander grabs hold of his hand and pumps it up and down before he can cast anything.

“Mr. Potter! Mr. Potter!” Ollivander’s voice is low and hoarse, but still loud enough to attract some stares. “Didn’t I tell you that you’d be a great wizard? _Didn’t I_?”

“It’s still mostly Runes, not my wand,” Harry points out. He pulls his hand away from Ollivander and takes a deep breath through his nose to calm himself. People are talking about him, he’s sure, even though it’s in whispers and probably because Ollivander barely ever comes out of his shop or singles someone out personally.

“But the greatness honors you _and_ your wand.” Ollivander steps back with a firm nod of his head. “I already have the wand that I’m sure your eldest daughter will carry. It’s also meant for a great spellcaster.”

Harry stares blankly at him. “I won’t have children. I can’t imagine leaving Theodore.” Theodore’s hand presses hard in the middle of his back.

“And do you think I’m that simple?” Ollivander scoffs. “If someone manages to come up with a way to create the children of two men through runic circles, Mr. Potter, I’m sure I’m looking at him. Besides, as great as the wand you carry now is, you may find you have even a greater one in a little while. One that would be happy to help you accomplish anything you desire.” He nods firmly and strides away.

Harry blinks after him, decides that last part doesn’t make sense and he’s not going to think about it, then looks at Theodore. “Would you want children?”

Theodore hesitates, then speaks in his smooth voice. “I wouldn’t be opposed.”

Harry smiles and steps closer to his side, using Theodore shamelessly to ward off some of the eyes. Honestly, don’t they have anything _better_ to look at?

People are still weird. But with Theodore at his side, and maybe even more people in the future, then Harry thinks he can bear living in this world.

He belongs here after all.

**The End.**


End file.
